US Representative Tom Allen will be there. Governor John Baldacci is expected to show. There will also be a male porn star, several chart-topping pop singers, local comedians, and a public celebration dubbed the “Corn Ball.”A Democratic fundraiser? Hardly — it’s the equivalent of a Trekkie convention for the gay and lesbian set, InterPride’s international convention, a group of more than 200 gay Pride organizers who come together once a year to canoodle and plan, drink and dance, and share their stories. They’ll descend on Portland this weekend, making a town generally known for its lack of gay night life the international hub of all that is queer.
“Sri Lanka, Philippines, Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Brazil, Iceland,” recites Chris Shuping; they are just some of the countries sending representatives to the confab planned almost entirely by him and his partner Mark Holt, Southern Maine Pride’s ringmasters.
InterPride, founded in Boston in 1982, held its first annual convention about a decade ago, when Pride events tended to be more political, far less attended (chiefly because most gay people were in the closet), and fodder for local and national TV news organizations salivating over the opportunity to showcase a drag queen, a be-chapped leather daddy, or a dyke on a bike.
This weekend’s convention will include some reasonably big-name performers at Saturday’s “Corn Ball:” singer/songwriter, producer, and DJ Georgie Porgie; Pepper Mashay, no stranger to Portland Pride events, best known for her hit “Dive Into the Pool,” as featured on Queer as Folk; Rachel Panay, a dance-floor favorite known for her hit “Walk of Shame;” and budding pop star and adult-film performer Frederick Ford, who went from Ivy League-educated Wall Streeter to “finding himself” and the kind of life that porn and pop music provide. (See also “High School Love,” by Tony Giampetruzzi)
Nowadays, with Prides going corporate, there’s serious work to be done. “Yes, it’s a business. There are small Prides and large Prides and they all need to know how to network and do business and stuff like that,” says Shuping. “And that’s really what a lot of this convention is about: showing people how to do it right, how to get entertainment, how to develop a contract, stuff like that.” The workshop titles sound fun, but the subjects are serious, including “Kiss Them Once? Twice? Or Just Shake Hands?: Business & Social Etiquette” and “Pride Means Business: 501C, S-Corp, Internal Document, Doesn’t Matter, It Applies To All.”
Holt says the conference showcases something more important than all that, though.
“A year ago we were helping Maine Won’t Discriminate save equal rights for gays and lesbians, and [this weekend] we will be showing the world, or at least the organizers of some of the most powerful GLBT Prides, that Maine is a state that will not discriminate,” he says.
One seminar, “Pride Not Prejudice: Prides In Hostile Environments,” is specifically aimed at people from overseas, places “where they have their Pride events very quietly if not secretly, and they often face discrimination if not outright violence,” says Shuping. “You take a look at Portland, and other places in the US, and you realize that we are in a bit of a bubble. There are a lot of people in the world who are just now getting started in their quest to celebrate their Pride.”
