Oakland Pride organizers hope to have all-time high attendance this year

The annual Oakland Pride festival will take place downtown this weekend.

The people of Oakland are set to celebrate their annual Pride festival on Sunday, September 11. This will be Oakland’s seventh annual Pride festival and third annual parade since the event returned in 2008. This year’s festival will have 60 contingents and floats representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups marching in Sunday’s parade,…

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Oakland Pride festival draws couples, families, celebration

Thousands of East Bay residents, gay and straight, celebrated last year’s gay rights triumphs on Sunday at Oakland’s second annual Gay Pride Festival. A landmark year in gay rights, 2011 saw the elimination of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy that banned openly gay personnel from serving in the military.

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Locals chip in on globally popular LGBT support videos

It Gets Better videos

The It Gets Better Project serves as a digital chorus of solidarity and support for LGBT adolescents and teens all over the world. The video project, which in less than a month has turned into an international phenomenon, was spearheaded by Seattle-based advice columnist Dan Savage in the wake of a sequence of gay teen suicides in September. Each teen death has been traced to peer bullying, and to the harsh reality of being a gay teenager in America.

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Locals react as judge upholds ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ injunction

don't ask don't tell, military, injunction, Judge Virginia Phillips, Oakland Pride Inc.

The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, passed by Congress in 1993, prohibits those who are openly gay from serving in the armed forces. Last week, a federal judge ordered an injunction putting a temporary halt to the policy and on Monday issued a tentative ruling to uphold that injunction. With the judge’s ruling, local Navy vet Michael Hughes said, Americans are “one step closer to liberty and justice for all.”

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