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“We can go outside and hold hands and dance and not have to pretend we’re just friends,” said Kathy from Orange, who declined to give her last name because she said her lover hasn’t told anyone that she is a lesbian. There have been other gay pride events in Orange County-including the annual Orange County Cultural Pride event at the UC Irvine-but never one in this seaside town with a large gay and lesbian population.īy the early afternoon, people had arrived from as far away as Ontario and Westchester at the festival grounds, where disc jockeys spun country and pop songs. Hundreds of people attended the city’s first-ever gay festival, which began Friday night and continues today with entertainment and information booths on the grounds of the Festival of Arts a street gathering at Main Street and South Coast Highway, and a volleyball tournament at West Street Beach.
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“It’s so refreshing, especially for people who aren’t open activists.” “Here, we can be who we are without worrying about it,” said Steve Ludwig, a board member of Laguna Outreach, one of the groups sponsoring the event. Saturday of “Laguna Pride Weekend” was decidedly low-key for an event that had generated heated debate among residents concerned that the gay and lesbian festival would turn the city into a gay mecca. Many more greeted old friends and sat on the grass soaking up the late-afternoon burst of sunshine. Others sat nibbling rigatoni and spinach salads.