Pride Month 2025: LGBTQ+ community on Long Island faces renewed challenges

This year’s Pride Month is the most important one in a generation for the LGBTQ+ community, according to advocates, amid fears that decades of progress will be overturned by President Donald Trump.

The reaction to Trump’s moves against the LGBTQ+ community — including officially declaring there are only two sexes: male and female — ranges from avoiding confrontation to defiance, organizers said. 

"Trans rights, gay rights, marriage equality — all the strides we’ve made to go forward are on the chopping block right now," said Lori Panarello, 65, who founded the North Fork Pride Parade in 2023.

"This administration ... they’re trying to take us 10 steps back," said Panarello, of Mattituck, where she lives with her wife.

When this year’s parade steps off in Greenport on June 22, Panarello said, "not only are we celebrating the battles that we’ve won, but we are trying to come together to fight the battles that are ahead of us, especially this year."

"I don’t think people are afraid," Panarello said. "I think people are ready to go out and fight for who we are and what we deserve. And I think allies are ready to come out and fight."

Others are trying to steer clear of conflict.

In Patchogue, advocates are holding their third annual Pride parade. They want to continue riding a wave of acceptance they have found in much of the community, said Ron Diele-Stein, one of the parade’s founders.

"Am I happy about the Trump thing? No," he said. "But I'm not looking to have an anti-Trump rally."

Pride organizers already have felt the chill of Trump's actions, he said.

"It's definitely harder to get funds than it was last year and the year before," he said. "Some of our big sponsors, we didn't hear from."

Since taking office Jan. 20, Trump also has sought to bar transgender girls and women from participating in female sports and to curb transgender people’s ability to serve openly in the military. He has moved to investigate schools with gender-neutral bathrooms, revoked federal funding from schools that teach about "gender ideology'' and cut millions in funds for research on the health of LGBTQ+ people.

The moves have unnerved many in the community after decades of progress since riots and protests in June 1969 against a police raid at The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. The uprising marked the start of the modern gay rights and liberation movement.

Some say they plan to continue that fight.

'Going to be defiant'

"This is the most consequential Pride of our lifetime," said David Kilmnick, whose group, the LGBT Network, is running the 35th annual Long Island Pride Parade in Huntington on June 8. Trump is "trying to erase the LGBTQ community from existence."

The community is "going to be anything but muted. We're going to be defiant, and we're also going to celebrate and have joy," he said. 

He noted that organizers had to go to court 35 years ago to win permission to hold the Pride parade.

Some in the community don’t want the struggle to overshadow what they said Pride events should be all about: celebration.

For Chris Lapkowski, Pride Month has often meant "party time," he said, especially in Manhattan.

"It’s exciting as a bartender. Pride usually brings people out," Lapkowski, 35, of Rockville Centre, said one recent evening behind the counter at NuBar, a gay bar in Farmingdale. "As a gay man, it brings me pride. It gives me hope for a better day."

On Sunday, as he heads down Deer Park Avenue to represent NuBar during the annual Babylon Village Pride Parade, Lapkowski hopes all those in attendance recognize that members of the LGBTQ+ community continue to fight "on the front lines of every single issue," he said.

"I hope that it will be more defiant," he added of this year’s celebration. "It’s what we need in this political climate."

Fears of regression

Anu Annam, 53, a nonbinary and pansexual person from Suffolk County, said in past decades, Pride Month was "a time that we could feel confident," referring to members of the LGBTQ+ community. Progress was made and Annam, who founded the arts nonprofit SEA of Visibility, and others felt safer year-round.

Annam "is still in shock" the term nonbinary has become more widely used in recent years.

But this year, Annam fears a regression.

"There was something distinctly different about the time that I grew up in when you couldn’t say it at all," Annam said of terms that reflect the identities of those in the LGBTQ+ community. "I’m worried ... that it will return to that."

John Schindler, 58, an intersex person who identifies as "intergender nonbinary," said they felt like a "black sheep" for many years before learning more about themself through doctors and other resources.

After the Stony Brook resident began working with the nonprofit Gender Equality New York and other organizations, they learned more about intersex individuals, including those who identify within the LGBTQ+ community.

"When you walk into your first convention and there are hundreds of people who are just like you, and most of your life you’re the only person like you you’ve ever met until well into adulthood, you’re like, ‘I’m not alone anymore,’" Schindler said. “‘I have a peer group.’"

Following Trump’s executive orders regarding gender identity, Schindler said intersex individuals felt targeted. But "the closet is not a safe place for anyone," they said, and Pride Month "has always been about getting to be your best self, getting to live your best life."

 "The only way to fight an unjust law, according to Martin Luther King, is to break it," Schindler said. "I’m going to do what I can to subvert it ... That’s what we do anytime we decide to publicly be out." 

'Pride is a protest'

Andraleia Buch, 38, a trans woman from Huntington, said "Pride is a protest," including against sports bans on trans women pushed not just by Trump but by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. County lawmakers in favor of the ban, which remains under litigation, argue trans girls have physical advantages that could injure girls designated female at birth or deprive them of scholarship opportunities, Newsday has reported.

Buch called it "a very volatile situation."

Buch, a bassist, takes to Long Island stages with an improvisational jam show called Empathology, which she said allowed her to connect with people — even Trump supporters.  The group will perform at SEA of Visibility's Pride and Shine arts and healing event on June 21. 

"I’ve helped change their minds in different ways," Buch said. "I’ve helped them see the importance that people like us are safe and respected and that our rights are taken care of."

In Northport, Pride organizers say, like in many other locations, they have gained official acceptance. But this year, there is also tension.

On Friday, advocates and officials raised a Pride flag at Northport Village Hall, a day after a multifaith prayer service for the LGBTQ+ community.

"We feel very comfortable in knowing that Northport is a safe place, but as far as the national picture is concerned, I think people are a little uneasy," said Joe Schramm, a co-founder of Northport Pridefest, now in its third year.

"In our meetings, I can tell you that they have been more stressful than in the past," he said. "The tone is different now. I think people feel uncomfortable."

Still, while the overall vibe in Northport is "laid back," he said, organizers are also making a point: This year’s Pridefest theme is "We all belong here."