Mike Pence's hometown to host its first gay pride festival, with high school senior at helm

The face painting, rainbow S’mores on a stick and drag performances planned for Columbus, Ind.’s first gay pride festival are for fun.

But organizers hope the April 14 event also will send a message of inclusiveness from the hometown of Vice President Pence, who has a long record of being on the opposite side of issues important to the gay and lesbian community.

“Most people would think that all of us here are also anti-LGBT,” said Erin Bailey, the high school senior organizing the April 14 event. “But there are plenty of us who very much support the LGBT community and are members of the community.”

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Still, count the vice president among those applauding Erin’s initiative.

“Vice President Pence commends Erin Bailey for her activism and engagement in the civic process,” spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said in a statement. “As a proud Hoosier and Columbus native, he’s heartened to see young people from his hometown getting involved in the political process.”

While Columbus hasn't previously had a gay pride festival, it is one of a handful of Indiana communities that has added LGBT protections to city ordinances.

The anti-discrimination change was made in 2015 after the state debate over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that Pence signed into law as Indiana’s governor. A backlash from businesses forced Pence to accept changes to the law to clarify that it could not be used to deny services to gays and lesbians for religious reasons.

During his dozen years in Congress, Pence advocated for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, opposed measures to protect gay men and lesbians from discrimination in the workplace, and opposed expanding the definition of hate crimes to cover offenses based on a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

But views on such LGBT issues are varied in Columbus. Cummins Inc., the city's largest employer, was among the Indiana companies that opposed the state's religious freedom act. In 2000, the engine maker also was the first Fortune 500 company based in Indiana to offer health insurance and other benefits to the same-sex partners of employees.

Cummins has pushed for a statewide nondiscrimination law that protects gay and transgender Hoosiers — in part to foster a better business environment.

Indiana’s high profile debate over the issue was one of the defining aspects of Pence’s gubernatorial years. He continues to be criticized nationally for his overall record on gay rights.

Gay Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon wasn’t pleased with the selection of Pence to head the U.S. delegation attending the Olympic opening ceremony.

Comedian John Oliver recently published a spoof of a book about the Pence family rabbit. In the spoof, a male bunny marries another male bunny over the objections of a stink bug judge who has a resemblance to Pence.

Samantha Aulick, who co-owns a Columbus catering company with her wife and is making the rainbow S’mores for the festival, said Pence often comes up as a subject of conversation when they travel out of state and tell people where they’re from.

“They’re like, `Oh, that’s where Mike Pence is from,’” she said. Aulick responds: “Yeah, but it’s not all like that.”

Columbus, once described as “Athens of the prairie” by Lady Bird Johnson, is one of the top cities in the nation for architectural quality and innovation.

The recent independent movie “Columbus” celebrating that unique history caught many by surprise.

“Who knew?” the Washington Post film critic wrote about Columbus being a mecca of midcentury modernist architecture.

The city has the Cummins Foundation to thank for the architecture, and for other community contributions.

“Columbus was famous for its embrace of the arts,” said Jill Tasker, president of the Pride Alliance of Columbus. “We’ve also had a good sense of civic and social leadership.”

But Cummins' decision in 2000 to offer benefits to same-sex partners divided the community. It split some church denominations and generated rare internal dissent in the company.

In response, the city’s gay and lesbian community decided it needed to be more visible and created the Pride Alliance.

The group has held art shows, sponsored a literacy walk for Haiti, and sponsored a production of “The Laramie Project” for LGBT History Month, among other recent activities. But it has never organized a pride festival.

“The town is ready for this,” Tasker said. “We need that declaration of acceptance and love and inclusion and celebration.”

Erin, who is bisexual, had the idea of organizing the festival as her senior class project.

“I wanted to do something that would really benefit the community,” she said.

And, she said, she would be organizing the festival even if Pence weren’t from Columbus.

“But it’s kind of a plus that it’s his hometown,” she said.

It’s also increased attention for the event.

Max Emerson, a social media artist from California, is among the people from outside Indiana who have been in touch with Erin about coming to the festival. His projects focus on themes of social justice and LGBT inclusion. Emerson said the Columbus event can inform a film he’s working on that mostly takes place in a small, Midwestern town.

“It’s important to me that the small town characters in this story are portrayed as humans with good intentions, not hateful/fearful bigots brandishing religion as a weapon,” Emerson said in an email. “There’s a huge divide in our country and the only way to bridge it is with compassionate communication.”

Even though Columbus has a committed group of people who are welcoming, Aulick said, it’s still a conservative community and being involved in a gay pride event can be risky.

“We face resistance for being gay, and we hear about,” she said. “But we’ve already weathered that.”

Most of the reaction Erin has gotten has been positive. And for those who have pushed back on the need for an LGBTQ pride festival, she’s sent this response: “A beautiful city hosting a beautiful fun event – sounds like great news to me.”

Contact Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe.