If you weren’t able to make it to Pride in person or you just want to relive the celebration, this virtual reality tour of LA Pride lets you experience it from home!
While you don’t need a Google Cardboard or headset (just click and drag with your mouse to look around and change perspectives), having one will definitely give you a more immersive viewing. Heads up, you will not be able to view 360 videos with Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox web browsers.
Pride.com and Daniel Franzese, who you’ll recognize as Damian from Mean Girls, take you on a brief tour, opening with:
There’s a lot things that you do not believe are possible, but become possible when people use their voice and march at Pride parade.
Franzese narrates the video, sharing what he finds so special about Pride:
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One of the things I think is so incredible for a person to see their first time at a Pride is the couples holding signs that they’ve been together for 50 years or the children walking with their parents, “I’m proud of my gay mom” or the religious groups–I feel like a lot of people have to make the choices between gay or God and not here.
Here you can be who you are and believe in what you believe and you can be celebrated for who you are.
He also shares his own coming out story and early experience at Pride:
Right before I came out I was asked by Portland to be the Grand Marshal of their Pride Parade, and when I was invited there I didn’t know how I would be received or what the crowd would be like, but even though it was raining–it is Portland and I was in a convertible–I turned a corner and there was a group of young people with a big sign that said, ‘You totally go here,” which my line from Mean Girls is, ‘she doesn’t even go here.’ So to turn the corner and see a huge banner that said, ‘You totally go here’ with a heart, I immediately started crying.
I couldn’t believe the warm acceptance that I had received from people. I grew up a very insecure, chubby gay kid. And to be accepted for who I am, regardless of anything, and maybe even because of who I am was a unique and wonderful experience I’ll never forget.
If there’s one message I can share with the young queer community, it would be that your voice matters. Each individual voice can be amplified to be a voice that can change thousands and thousands of people’s lives.
You can watch the full video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slr3Mj8Fdjk
