Tens of thousands of people gathered in downtown Orlando for one of the biggest pride celebrations in the country.
- One of the biggest pride celebrations in the country
- Orlando Come Out With Pride features festival, parade, fireworks
- Families see event as a chance to teacher their children
“Come Out with Pride” featured a parade, music, a street festival and fireworks.
The parade’s community grand marshals were Rebecca Storozuk -- the first transgender Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy -- the Orlando Gay Chorus and the late Billy Manes as an honorary grand marshal.
Manes was a longtime editor for Watermark magazine and revered in the Orlando LGBTQ community.
At Orlando Pride, the Vasquez family was easy to spot with matching t-shirts, their kids with rainbow-dyed hair and two mothers excited to share pride with their kids.
“Just walk around and have them see that this is life, this is love,” said Kisha Rosa.
Rosa says their kids have lots of fun -- especially their son.
“He loves coming,” said Rosa. “He loves to represent that he has two moms -- he thinks he’s special.”
But Rosa hopes her kids also learn something at all of the pride festivities.
“People are going to come at them in life because they have two moms. They’re going to get made fun of and they’ll probably get bullied. But I want them to know there is a community where people are accepting,” said Rosa.
With the Trump administration proposing a ban on transgender people in the military and other efforts to weaken protections for the LGBT community, Rosa admits she’s concerned about what she feels is a lack of support at the federal level. That’s why she says it’s even more important for her entire family to celebrate pride.
“I can only pray that we don’t get pushed back, for as far as we’ve come," Rosa said. "No matter what, at the end of the day we are going to stand together.”