Southern Utah Pride Not Easy to Come By

From an article in The Salt Lake Tibune;

Salt Lake City’s gay-pride festival draws tens of thousands of people. Major sponsors such as Wells Fargo, Hilton and Bud Light line up to splash their logos at the event. And politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, march in the parade - second only in size to Utah’s Days of ‘47 procession.
Not so at southwestern Utah’s only pride festival.  St. George-based Southern Utah Pride Association (SUPA), which serves the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) communities, struggles to secure sponsors, attract politicians and boost attendance in one of the nation’s most conservative regions - home to cities that spawned an official “U.N.-free

zone,” a short-lived ordinance requiring a gun in every home and a resolution embracing “natural” families.
Still, SUPA President Chris McArdle hopes the event comes into its own this year - the festival’s sixth - by luring 5,000 people to Springdale on Sept. 26 and 27.
“Last year, we had 1,013 - and we thought that was impossible,” he says, noting previous years had only a few hundred attendees. “We’re at that transitional period. Everyone who’s afraid to support us needs to realize that there’s a lot of people who do. The fear is they’re going to stick out.”

Read the rest of this article at sltrib.com.