For years they have stayed in the shadows of the annual Pride Festival celebration. This year, members of the transgender community staked their claim to the "T' in LGBTQ and their place in the annual celebration of rights for the LGBTQ community.

The festival, which attracted upwards of thousands of people to Riverfront Park in Harrisburg on Saturday, was steeped with messages of solidarity for Orlando as well as that for the transgender community.

"For years we have been shoved under the carpet, given no say," said Stephanie Josephine Fritsch, a transgender woman who on Saturday was volunteering with Trans Central PA. "It's going to take a long time to get equality, but it will happen."

Fritsch began to transition into a woman two years and is now "legally" a woman. She said her wife left her when she came out as a transgender woman.

America's transgender community came under the national spotlight in May when the Obama administration sent a letter to nearly 100,000 public schools defending transgender rights and threatening school districts that violated those rights.

The directive elevated the national debate over so-called "bathroom laws" to a fever pitch, as local governments and schools districts wrestle with the question of whether one's gender identity or biological sex should determine bathroom usage. As the transgender community turned up the volume on its calls for gender neutral public bathrooms, conservative sectors mounted an even greater and vocal pushback.

North Carolina led the pushback, with a so-called "bathroom bill" referred to as HB2 that has become the focus of the pushback. The bill prevents transgender individuals from using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The U.S. Department of Justice has ruled that the bill likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dozens of celebrities have boycotted North Carolina as a result of the bill, the latest of them, the National Basketball Association, which recently announced it would relocate the 2017 NBA All-Star Game scheduled for Charlotte, North Carolina.

"Not only the trans, but the rest of the LGBTQ community should have rights," said Jayden Roberts, a 16-year-old transgender girl from York who attended PrideFest. "We shouldn't be shot at. We shouldn't be scared to walk outside. We are people. We are not animals, not monsters. We are not against God. We love God. God loves everyone. I think it's time we have our rights."

Negotiating the crowded festival, a blue umbrella shielding her from a downpour, Dr. Rachel Levine, the Pennsylvania Physician General, and highest ranked out transgender person ever to serve in Pennsylvania government, said Gov. Tom Wolf's administration was fighting for diversity and inclusion.

"It's important to support diversity in all of its aspects including diversity for LGBTQ individuals," she said. "We are working very hard for fairness and equality in Pennsylvania for everyone."