Queer Cafe

One of the big Easter events in the LGBTQ community is the Annual Gay Easter Parade! It was started in 2000 in New Orleans, Louisiana as a fun way to showcase the fashion and creativity of the LGBTQ community “with ladies in gowns or summer suits with Easter Hats and gentlemen in summer suits or tuxedos.” It’s meant to be a fun cultural event the whole family can attend regardless of whether or not you identify as LGBTQ.

It is also the typical time of year for the LGBTQ community to come out and have fun. Spring events with queer themes might include weddings, film festivals, brunches, dance parties, picnics, parades, outdoor concerts, street markets, and outdoor art shows. It's a great time for running, walking, hiking, cycling and field days for fundraising or just for fun. It's time for drag queen story time and gay men's chorus concerts. And it's also the time for queer prom.

"It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray.
It’s here! It’s here! That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear!
That darling month when everyone throws self-control away.
It's wild! It's gay! A month of dismay!

It’s May! It’s May! That gorgeous holiday
It’s mad! It’s gay! A libelous display!

Those dreary vows that everyone takes, everyone breaks.
Everyone makes divine mistakes! The lusty month of May!

It’s time to do a wretched thing or two, and try to make each precious day
One you’ll always rue! It’s May! It’s May!
It’s wild! It’s gay! Depraved in every way!"

-Alan Jay Lerner, Camelot

Beltane Ritual

Gay Springtime Comes to New Orleans
I Feel So Much Spring: Boston Gay Men's Chorus

Is Easter Becoming More Queer Inclusive?
Gay Springtime Comes to New York City
Easter: Holiday for People on the Margins of Society
Spring: Short LGBTQ Film
Bloom by Troye Sivan

Mental Floss: Spring is the Most Delightful Season
Church Holds Easter Drag Service to Stand Up Against Anti-Trans Bills

Loveable Springtime

Summer, winter, and fall may have their fans, but spring is clearly the most lovable of the four seasons. There are some perfectly good reasons why spring is so delightful.

Spring marks the end of blistering winter and the transitional period to scorching summer. In many places, the season brings mild temperatures in the 60s and 70s.People tend to be most comfortable at such temperatures. So the arrival of spring means you can finally ditch the heavy winter layers and still be comfortable.

Following the spring equinox, days begin lasting longer and nights get shorter. Daylight Saving Time, which moves the clock forward starting in March, gives you even more light hours to get things done. Those extra hours of sun can be a major mood-booster. We know that the longer the sun is up during the day, the less mental distress people experience.

Bloom by Troye Sivan

Springtime in Arkansas: Gay Friendly Town in Rural America

Bambi: April Showers

It Might As Well Be Spring
Purim: The Queerest Jewish Spring Holiday

New Orleans: Annual Gay Easter Parade

Gay Springtime Comes to Philadelphia
Jazz Trio: It Might As Well Be Spring

Pot of Gold at the End of the...

There is no better indicator of spring than birds chirping outside your window. Their northward migration can start as early as mid-February and last into June, meaning that throughout the spring, you can expect to see a major avian influx.

Warmer temperatures mean you can spend more time outside, which is great for mental health. You can get back to taking walks in nature, enjoying the great outdoors, and breathing in the fresh air.

Temperate weather makes it easier to get the fresh air you need. You can open your windows and let in the breeze. Spring brings the perfect opportunity to throw open those windows and doors and get the air moving again.

Easter: Holiday for People on the Margins of Society
Gay Easter Parade in New Orleans
Bloom by Troye Sivan

Spring: Short LGBTQ Film
Gay Springtime Comes to Philadelphia

Jazz Trio: It Might As Well Be Spring
Mental Floss: Spring is the Most Delightful Season

New Orleans: Annual Gay Easter Parade

Queering St. Patrick's Day

"When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay. And when Irish eyes are smiling, sure, they steal your heart away."
-Bing Crosby

St. Patrick’s Day is an opportunity for Irish (and really any) Queers to celebrate. But the holiday also recognizes the discrimination many from the Emerald Isle experienced as marginalized immigrants. Although LGBTQ communities have been left out of the festivities in the past (New York City and Boston parades only recently allowed them to march with their banners) these groups have played an important role in St. Patrick’s Day Parades since the 1990s.

City groups have begun to realize that members of the Irish and LGBTQ communities have a lot in common. Cities with large Irish populations (like Boston, New York, and Chicago) have admitted, “We’re a city of cultures, and the LGBTQ community is a part of it.” Recognizing this intersectionality (as well as a chance to party) clubs, restaurants and bars throughout major cities are honoring Queer and Irish Pride together.

Let's Sing a Gay Little Spring Song

Bambi: April Showers

Connecticut: LGBTQ Spring Celebrations
Lusty Month of May

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Garden Digest: Springtime Poems and Quotations

Springtime Quotes and Poetry

“The sun does arise. And make happy the skies. The merry bells ring To welcome the spring.”
-William Blake

“In just spring, when the world is mudluscious, the little lame balloon man whistles far and wee, and eddie and bill come running from marbles and piracies, and it's spring. When the world is puddle wonderful, the queer old balloon man whistles far and wee, and betty and isbel come dancing from hopscotch and jumprope, and it's spring. And the goat footed balloon man whistles far and wee.”
-E. E. Cummings

“The month of May has come, when every lusty heart begins to blossom.”
-Sir Thomas Mallory

Gay Springtime Comes to New Orleans

Church Holds Easter Drag Service to Stand Up Against Anti-Trans Bills

I Feel So Much Spring: Boston Gay Men's Chorus
Is Easter Becoming More Queer Inclusive?
Gay Springtime Comes to New York City
Springtime in Arkansas: Gay Friendly Town in Rural America

Gay Easter Parade in New Orleans
It Might As Well Be Spring
Pot of Gold at the End of the...

“Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun. And I say it's alright. Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here. Little darling, the smiles are returning to their faces. Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun. And I say it's alright. Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.”
-George Harrison

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”
-William Shakespeare

“We'veplodded through a weird and weary time called winter by the calendar alone. We have beheld an earth pool-deep in slime. Image a heaven of stone. We've found life hid between the folds of mire, sensed life in every place, heard life in tune. The earth shell cracks with underneath desire. Spring crawls from the cocoon. Her puny wings vibrate with will to grow. She clings, expanding like an opening eye, more large, more able, more developed. Lo, the perfect butterfly.”
-E. E. Cummings

Gay Springtime Comes to New Orleans
I Feel So Much Spring: Boston Gay Men's Chorus
Is Easter Becoming More Queer Inclusive?
Gay Springtime Comes to New York City
Springtime in Arkansas: Gay Friendly Town in Rural America

Gay Easter Parade in New Orleans
Happy Mardi Gras

It Might As Well Be Spring
Pot of Gold at the End of the...

“Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring, in triumph to the world, the youthful spring.”
-Thomas Nashe

“Spring is like a perhaps hand, which comes carefully out of nowhere, arranging a window into which people look, while people stare, arranging and changing, placing carefully there a strange thing, and a known thing here, and changing everything carefully. Spring is like a perhaps hand in a window, carefully to and fro, moving new and old things, while people stare carefully, moving a perhaps fraction of a flower here, placing an inch of air there, and without breaking anything.”
-E. E. Cummings

"Oh how I love the springtime gay that brings the leaves and flowers out!
As much to hear the merry way of birds who throw their song about, to echo through the glen.
So much I love a meadow fair festooned with tents whose banners flare.
And oh, what rapture then, when ranks up on that field prepare,
each armored knight upon his mare."

-Bertran de Born

“For winter's rains and ruins are over, and all the season of snows and sins. The days dividing lover and lover, the light that loses, the night that wins. And time remembered is grief forgotten, and frosts are slain and flowers begotten, and in green under wood and cover, blossom by blossom the spring begins.”
-Algernon Charles Swinburne

Easter: Holiday for People on the Margins of Society
Bloom by Troye Sivan

Spring: Short LGBTQ Film
Gay Springtime Comes to Philadelphia
Jazz Trio: It Might As Well Be Spring
Mental Floss: Spring is the Most Delightful Season
Let's Sing a Gay Little Spring Song

New Orleans: Annual Gay Easter Parade

"O sweet spontaneous earth, how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee, has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty, how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees, squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods, but true to the incomparable couch of death, thy rhythmic lover, thou answerest them only with spring."
-E. E. Cummings

“When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of spring.”
-Madeleine M. Kunin

“And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere. And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Bambi: April Showers

Connecticut: LGBTQ Spring Celebrations

Church Holds Easter Drag Service to Stand Up Against Anti-Trans Bills

Gay Easter Parade in New Orleans
Lusty Month of May

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Garden Digest: Springtime Poems and Quotations

Easter Message Compares Treatment of Gay People with Crucifixion of Christ

Queers Owe Our Spring to Our Ancestors

Queers owe our Spring to our ancestors. The Radical Faeries, Lavender Menace, Pansies, Friends of Dorothy, Dandies, Clones and Queens. Names always changing insult into revolution.

The ones who turned a pink triangle into a compass. Leather into armor, pamphlets into bibles, riots into parades. Heart medication into poppers, like water into wine. Electroshock and chemical castration into new pronouns and hormones. Their conversion therapy into our transitions. Mug shots in newspapers so we could be plastered on ads. Bartending mob speakeasies so we could stare at our phones in glistening bars.

Evicted on the same streets we celebrate Supreme Court victories. Necks under the boots of AIDS so we can hold our heads high. The fascism of their everyday into our freedom. Their sacrifices are our generational wealth. Their alchemy is our inheritance.

[Source: Leo Herrera]

Gay Springtime Comes to New Orleans
I Feel So Much Spring: Boston Gay Men's Chorus

Is Easter Becoming More Queer Inclusive?
Gay Springtime Comes to New York City
Springtime in Arkansas: Gay Friendly Town in Rural America

Gay Easter Parade in New Orleans
It Might As Well Be Spring
Pot of Gold at the End of the...

Easter for LGBTQ Christians

Easter Message Resonates with LGBTQ Community

Churches across Christendom celebrate the core tenets of Christianity during the Easter season. But the Easter message is especially poignant for the LGBTQ community. Inclusive faith-based communities serve their congregations well by connecting the story of Jesus’ passion and resurrection to the shared life-journey of their gay church members. The heart of the Easter message is one of hope and “new life” in the face of betrayal, rejection and death. Inclusive congregations embrace their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as both gift and task and this is the first step in realizing the “new life” reflected from that first Easter.

The events leading up to Jesus’ death resonate personally for the gay community on many levels. Gay and lesbian church members identify closely with the betrayal experienced by Jesus. Religious authorities rejected his teaching of inclusivity: dining with sinners, engaging Samaritan outcasts and challenging the self-importance of the Pharisee insiders of the religious establishment of his day. The religious peers of Jesus did not want to accept the spiritual thread he taught, establishing a common bond of brother/sisterhood that requires the response to treat others as one wished to be treated. Finally, expanding the universal invitation of God’s salvation beyond the religious elites was just too much to bear.

And so, among many unwelcoming faith communities, it is an absurdity, if not an abomination, to welcome lesbian and gay people fully as equal recipients of God’s grace and salvation. Failing to recognize that they are made in the image of God is a rejection at the very spiritual core. Identifying with the rejection inflicted on Jesus, the gay community experiences rejection of their loving relationships through the establishment of the Defense of Marriage Act; they are confronted with injustice in the workplace that could be safeguarded through the enactment of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; as Jesus was brutalized during his scourging and crucifixion, gays and lesbians are taunted, bullied, bashed and murdered for who they are. For some gay teens, this rejection is beyond reconciliation and leads to suicide.

But the final vindication is in the Easter message. Jesus’ resurrection is more than just rising from the dead. It is a radical “new life” that is offered to all: straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. The Easter mystery is the vindication of the life and teaching of Jesus; that God’s invitation is freely bestowed on all. The gift for inclusive churches is their ability to embrace this “new life” through the acceptance of their gay children. The task remains incomplete until all Christian churches are truly welcoming and inclusive.

[Source: John Lazar, Washington Blade, April 2011]

Beltane Ritual

Church Holds Easter Drag Service to Stand Up Against Anti-Trans Bills

Easter: Holiday for People on the Margins of Society
Easter Message Compares Treatment of Gay People with Crucifixion of Christ

Spring: Short LGBTQ Film
New Orleans: Annual Gay Easter Parade

Gay Springtime Comes to Philadelphia

Jazz Trio: It Might As Well Be Spring
Bloom by Troye Sivan

Mental Floss: Spring is the Most Delightful Season
Bambi: April Showers

Let's Sing a Gay Little Spring Song