This is the second in a five-part series for The Colorado Dream: Ending the Hate State. The stories in this series are part of the KUNC podcast The Colorado Dream, airing on Mondays beginning October 7. The podcast is available for download wherever you may listen to podcasts and on KUNC.org.
Walking into this year’s Greeley Pride at Aims Community College, guests are greeted like family. A small group of women from Free Mom Hugs stand near the entrance with their arms open wide.
“Free mom hugs?” asked Stacy Ziegelbauer, who co-leads the Colorado chapter of Free Mom Hugs, a national organization made up of affirming adults who want the LGBTQ community to know that they are loved and accepted. “Happy Pride.”
On June 8th, close to 1,500 visitors of all ages milled about the massive three-story Welcome Center where around 80 vendors, kid and teen zones, a community memorial art project and more were hosted for the public.
Decked out in festive attire, organizer Andromeda D’Angelo Stanfield rocked short rainbow-dyed hair, a rainbow blazer, and pink and black mismatched sneakers.
“Pride, to me, is just a place where we get to celebrate who we are,” Stanfield said. “Pride means our community coming together. We're stronger together. We really are.”
However, the road to putting on this event was paved with struggle.
In the spring of 2023, the High Plains Library District was planning a Greeley Pride Celebration with the University of Northern Colorado. Stanfield had recently started working for the district as an events and experiences librarian. They are genderfluid which means their identity or expression is not fixed but can vary between male, female and beyond.
Stanfield said the planning hit a snag when discussions turned to drag. Drag is a type of performance art that uses tools including costumes, makeup, and music to explore exaggerated forms of gender expression. Drag has always been an integral part of Pride and has become more mainstream in recent years as it has become the focus of popular television shows and community story hours.
Drag has also become increasingly controversial.
“There were differences of opinion on whether or not drag should be involved in the event. And in the end, both High Plains Library District and UNC decided that they should drop the event, and they couldn't run a successful event,” they said.
Details about why the event was canceled are still unclear. The High Plains Library District did not respond to KUNC News' request for a comment. In 2023, a spokesperson told the Greeley Tribune that the district “reached a decision after an internal review of the planning.”
UNC sent KUNC News a statement that says it celebrates people from diverse backgrounds and intersecting identities. The university’s role was to support the decision made by the High Plains Library District.
“I don't feel like they were saying no to these things because they don't care,” Stanfield said. “I really feel like they were just doing their best to navigate a difficult situation.”
In September, a former employee filed a lawsuit against the High Plains Library District. Rosa Granado alleges she was fired in retaliation for speaking out against the library’s cancellation of the 2023 Greeley Pride event which she helped plan. She was not the first employee to be let go in the past few years.
In 2021, High Plains Library District fired librarian Brooky Parks. Parks said she was terminated after objecting to the district’s cancellation of programs for LGBTQ+ teens and youth of color. A few months after the library district canceled its 2023 Greeley Pride event, the district paid Parks $250,000 to settle a civil rights dispute. The settlement came after the Colorado Civil Rights Division told the district to update its policies to be more inclusive.
Stanfield was committed to having Pride in Greeley and believed the High Plains Library District canceled its event because the district doesn’t allow drag.
This is not an unusual policy.
Drag Story Hour is an event where drag queens read to children. It was created in San Francisco in 2015 and has quickly spread across the globe. The organization’s goal is to capture the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood while giving kids queer role models.
However, critics say these events are inappropriate because drag performances are an attempt to groom children. Others say drag queens present caricatures of femininity that can be harmful to youth. Advocates for drag counter that these baseless tropes falsely assert queer people are pedophiles, sexual predators, or threats to children.
Libraries across the country have started to ban these story hours. In recent years, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits against bans in Louisiana, Montana, and Texas and monitors bills banning drag that are introduced in state legislatures.
The controversy around drag story hours boils down to gender versus sexuality, Stanfield said.
“I think there's a huge subset of the community who doesn't understand the difference between gender and sexuality. That, to the core, is the issue,” they said. "So people see drag, and they think sex, and that's not what it is in the slightest. So you can express gender, and you can explore gender with children without it being a sex thing.”
'Opposite of shame is pride'
Stanfield grew up in a part of Texas that lacked safe spaces and community. They say it created a sense of being alone, and they lost several people, including a dear friend who died by suicide. That death changed everything. Stanfield couldn’t live in Texas anymore and moved to Northern Colorado in 2020. They needed to be a part of the solution and, today, sit on the board of three LGBTQ+ non-profit organizations.
Stanfield started working full-time at the High Plains Library District in March of 2023. They moved to Greeley from Fort Collins a year later.
“Everything that I do is so that people in my community and in the queer community can feel safe and that they're not alone,” they said.
But at one time in the not-so-distant past, queer communities in Weld County and the whole state didn’t feel safe.
The November 1992 election threw Colorado’s LGBTQ+ residents into a dark place. Voters had approved Amendment 2, which prohibited the state and local cities and towns from protecting lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from discrimination. Colorado was labeled the “Hate State,” and a nationwide boycott cost the state millions of dollars.
Because of the passage, Denver’s 1993 Pride drew a robust crowd of supporters. That June, 40,000 people attended the event.
“So many people came out in the wake of that terrible victory of the conservative right,” said Phil Nash, author of LGBTQ Denver.
Nash moved to Denver with his now-husband nearly 50 years ago after college. He said that when the Supreme Court overturned Amendment 2 in 1996, the next Pride was even larger.
“People were coming out to celebrate the fact that we had taken Amendment 2 down for good,” he said.
As a gay man growing up in the 50s and 60s, Nash said it was a repressive environment. Coming out would bring shame to you and your family.
“The opposite of shame is pride,” he said. “That is why we adopted the word pride because we wanted to dispel the idea that being gay or being lesbian or being of a diverse gender was somehow a shameful thing.”
Denver hosted its 50th PrideFest in 2024, and annual Pride celebrations are now springing up across Northern Colorado. But LGBTQ+ folks, including Stanfield, are still fighting to hold these events their way.
'Don’t get to cancel Pride'
After the High Plains Library District canceled Greeley Pride in 2023, Stanfield took over organizing it with the help of friends.
“We stole this event basically and said, you know what? You don't get to cancel Pride. You don't have to run it. But we're going to go ahead and take it,” they said. “Our community deserves a pride event.”
It was already mid-May, and time was running out to pull together a Pride event in June. The first task was to find a venue. They reached out to place after place after place.
That’s when Aims Community College stepped in. Students were excited to participate in the original Pride event and had even reserved a table before it was canceled. They were disappointed, and then two student leadership groups spoke up and asked to host it.
2023 Greeley Pride was held in the Student Commons building and more than 600 people attended the event which Janet said was very well received and well organized, according to Janet Chase, the college’s director of the Student Life department.
“This is really the students' passion to bring this (event) and their goal is to increase a sense of belonging, increase inclusivity,” Chase said.
The Aims community provided so much positive feedback that the Student Government Association held a formal vote to host the event on campus every year in partnership with the Greeley Pride organizers.
When the 2023 Greeley Pride ended, Stanfield and their team held a community circle with a small group to find out what they needed to feel supported. Almost every single participant said community, safe spaces, and resources.
“I ran with that, and I said, ‘You know what? We can't just do Pride. We need more than that in this community,’” they said.
They started the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Advocacy Council of Greeley. The nonprofit partners with local organizations, including the High Plains Library District, to provide resources and create ongoing programs and events, including support groups for queer youth and parents.
JEDI and Aims Community College were the main organizers of the 2024 Greeley Pride. Student Nohelia Batres, who was attending her first Pride event, was one of the event volunteers.
“I had so much fun,” she said. “I know a lot of schools are not as accepting. So the fact that Aims is doing this really shows that they do care and they do listen to the students, and it's amazing.
Attendee Jackie Eubank was inspired too and even left with some ideas for her own event.
'A safe person in the community'
The 2024 Johnstown/Milliken Pride took place outside the local YMCA on July 13. Lining the sidewalk were pop-up tents housing community organizations and vendors. Eubank organized the event and said the goal was for the nearly 170 attendees to know they are welcome to be their authentic selves.
“There are groups, businesses, and people in the community that affirm them and accept them for who they are,” she said.
Johnstown and Milliken are neighboring rural towns with deep agricultural roots in Weld County. They share school and recreation districts, and the population is growing rapidly.
When Eubank organized the first Pride in 2022, it was a coming-out moment of sorts for her. She is pansexual, someone who is attracted to people regardless of gender.
“I am a white woman. I'm married to a man, so I can be straight-passing,” she said. "I know that I don't face some of the adversity that somebody whose relationship is more obviously queer would face.”
But the adversity was coming.
In 2023, she decided to run for the local school board in the district where her two kids attend elementary school. She was already very active with the district, and her platform focused on district growth and fostering a sense of belonging for students and families.
On election day, Eubank’s phone started blowing up. Strangers were reacting to her personal Facebook page, where she had photos of her and her kids at a family-friendly drag show in Greeley.
“I started to get messages or comments that were talking about how I'm a groomer, they would never let me near their kids, I shouldn't be seeking office in a school board,” she said. “I should kill myself.”
Eubank’s family photos, as well as her candidacy for the school board, ended up on Libs of TikTok, a far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ social media account with millions of followers. She received death threats, and her husband got threatening messages.
“It was very frightening to experience that kind of flat-out hate from somebody who doesn't know me at all,” she said.
In 2022, one-fourth of all hate crime incidents in Colorado were motivated by homophobia or transphobia, which is slightly higher than the national average. These stats include the mass shooting at Club Q, where five people were murdered at the Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ nightclub. The shooter pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes in June.
This year, a new Colorado law took effect that added violence and harassment against transgender people to the state’s existing hate crime laws.
Eubank lost the school board race, and it’s taken time for her to heal from the experience. But ultimately she said it fortified the importance of having a Pride event.
“It fortifies the importance of being a safe person in the community. If I'm receiving this kind of vitriol other people are likely receiving it as well and they need to have people in their corner,” she said.
'A story of perseverance'
Stanfield attended the 2024 Johnstown/Milliken Pride in two capacities. The first was as a singer with the Northern Colorado Regional Ensembles' transgender choir, which they also founded.
The second as an employee with the High Plains Library District PopUp Library, which displayed books about Pride for all ages that could be checked out on the spot. While the district did cancel Greeley Pride in 2023, its outreach team has shown up at Pride events in Weld County since then.
“I think it matters that High Plains is trying and that they're working with us, and we're doing programs with them.”
JEDI, the non-profit Stanfield helped create, is already planning Greeley Pride 2025 with Aims Community College.
“I think that what we did with Greeley Pride really shows you what can happen if you stand up in the face of adversity and do what you know is right,” they said. “It's a story of perseverance.”
In the three decades since Colorado earned the moniker “the Hate State,” Colorado has become known for its progressive stance on LGBTQ+ rights and laws, particularly when it comes to ensuring non-binary and transgender people have access to the health care they need.
"The Colorado Dream: Ending the Hate State" is a production from KUNC News and a member of the NPR Podcast Network.
