LI Pride Parade returns with music, joy and rainbow colors

They marched, cheered and reveled on Main Street in Farmingdale Village Sunday in the first full return of the annual Long Island Pride Parade.

Spectators draped in large Pride flags and dressed in rainbow colors danced to the booming music as dozens of groups marched down Main Street, passing restaurants and bars that were decorated with colorful balloons and posters.

Ashley Lyons, a college student of Lindenhurst, grew emotional as she watched the parade.

“I wanted to go to Pride for a few years. But I was always nervous because I wasn't out. I came out during the pandemic,” she said. “I just feel really happy. … I feel like I'm among people that get me.”

Sunday’s event, attended by thousands according to organizers, was the 32nd Pride festival organized by the LGBT Network of Long Island. It began in 1991 in Huntington and later went to Long Beach for three years. The parade went virtual in 2020 due to the pandemic. Last June, the festival came back with a concert in Eisenhower Park. This year’s event was the first in Farmingdale.

There was heightened police presence at the parade Sunday, one day after Idaho police arrested 31 members of a white supremacist group on charges of conspiracy to riot at a Pride event.

Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said police increased patrols, blocked off certain intersections with trucks and had officers walk along with the parade groups.

“There are no threats to this parade at all today,” Ryder said.

David Kilmnick, president and CEO of the LGBT Network, said incidents like the one in Idaho made the event even more meaningful.

“There's a lot of stuff that's alarming that we need to make sure that we're more out, we're more loud, we're more proud and we're more visible, and we do it together,” he said. “Today was exactly that here in Farmingdale.”

Kilmnick paused the parade procession to mark the sixth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, where 49 people were killed.

“This is a time for us to just quickly have a moment of silence and remember those in our community who we lost to the senseless hate violence,” Kilmnick told the crowd. “That's why we're out here today marching in the thousands to make sure that all violence ends.”

Here on Long Island, Robert Fehring, a former Bellport High School teacher, pleaded guilty in February in federal court in Central Islip to sending dozens of threatening letters to Kilmnick and other LGBTQ community leaders over eight years. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.

Prosecutors say Fehring also sent threatening letters to chamber of commerce officials in Sayville and Patchogue who provided support to Pride events.

Village Mayor Ralph Ekstrand said Farmingdale welcomed Pride.

“Our downtown is a four-minute walk from the train station,” he said before the parade began. “We're centrally located, so come on down to Farmingdale and enjoy.”

Laura Goncalves wished her daughter, Jessica, was there to see it.

“It's never happened here before,” said Goncalves, who moved to New Hyde Park six years ago after having lived in Farmingdale for 30 years. Her daughter, who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community, grew up in Farmingdale and lives in Oregon.

Goncalves wiped away tears as she filmed the parade procession in light rain with her phone. She was following a float that her niece, a Farmingdale High School senior, was in.

“I parked quite a distance from here and walked up and I saw people all over out there with their lawn chairs and it's bad weather,” she said. “This is just wonderful.”

Rainer Pasca, 16, a Bay Shore Senior High School student on a float, said he felt as though he knew everyone there.

“I'm really, really so happy to be here,” he said. “I just feel like there's something that connects us all.”

With Michael O'Keeffe

By Dandan Zou

dandan.zou@newsday.com@DandanZou

Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.