A teenager is organizing a gay pride festival in Mike Pence's hometown of Columbus, Indiana.
The April 14 event will include face painting, drag queen performances, and rainbow S’mores on a stick, but its real purpose is to send a message of inclusiveness directed at the vice president, who believes in a Biblical definition of marriage.
High school student Erin Bailey is the driving force behind the gay pride festival, which she organized as her senior project.
“Most people would think that all of us here are also anti-LGBT,” Bailey said, USA today reported. “But there are plenty of us who very much support the LGBT community and are members of the community.”
“I am organizing Columbus Pride Festival because I feel it is important for members of the LGBTQ community to know that Columbus is a welcoming and diverse community,” Bailey told HuffPost. “Even though Mike Pence is openly anti-gay, that doesn’t mean that all of us in his hometown are.”
Festival supporters see it as something of a risk given the pride festival will take place in Pence’s hometown.
“It’s this massive undertaking and it’s political risky,” Samantha Aulick, who is supporting the festival, told The Hill. “We live in a conservative community.”
However, the vice president is not only fine with the festival, he applauds its young organizer.
“Vice President Pence commends Erin Bailey for her activism and engagement in the civic process,” spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said in a statement. “As a proud Hoosier and Columbus native, he’s heartened to see young people from his hometown getting involved in the political process.”
When Pence served as a congressman, he supported a Constitutional amendment that would have prohibited same-sex marriages, and while governor, he signed a religious freedom bill into law.
Although the Columbus city council has enacted LGBT protections in the past, April 14 will mark the first gay pride festival to be held in the city.
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