First Amendment on display as opposing sides reckon with Pride

For many, a Pride festival is a fairly straightforward event, a celebration of unity among people marginalized for who they are and who they love. But in a purer sense, Haywood County’s historic first Pride festival and a competing prayer meeting held the night before were both compelling exercises of constitutionally protected rights, suggesting maybe — just maybe — that Americans can, in fact, disagree without being disagreeable.

Haywood’s inaugural Pride festival kicks off

Raymond Valentine has seen a lot of things in his long life, but after 80 years he doesn’t have to wait much longer to see a Pride festival in the rugged Appalachian county where he’s lived nearly his entire life. 

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