Alaska’s LGBT community celebrates 40 years of pride

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Participants walk in the Alaska Pride equality parade Saturday, June 24, 2017. Identity Alaska, a statewide LGBT organization, has organized a pride festival each year since its founding in 1977. (Loren Holmes / Alaska Dispatch News)

Identity Alaska, a nonprofit LGBT advocacy group, turns 40 years old in 2017. Identity organizes Anchorage's Pride Festival, which is capped off each year with the equality parade, an event that has grown from a handful of people in the late 1970s to over 10,000 participants in 2016.

"Forty years ago LGBT Alaskans marched down the street with bags over their heads," said Anchorage Assembly member Christopher Constant. "Today we marched with two openly gay elected officials as the grand marshals."

Constant and fellow assembly member Felix Rivera were elected in early 2016, becoming Anchorage's first openly gay elected officials.

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"This is bigger than the parade," said Constant. "This whole week has been an adventure. All week I've been talking to people, and they are scared. They're scared about what's going to happen to their health care, scared about the state budget. So it's been nice to be a ray of light, and to report that we are making progress. And to be the evidence of progress."

"We've come a long way," said Rivera, "and we need to celebrate that. Being a grand marshal was a revolutionary experience. I was almost in tears. This community has so much love. It's what pride is all about."