If you're looking for coverage of Knoxville Pridefest in the Knoxville media market today, you're looking in vain. I didn't find anything at the Knoxville News Sentinel except an article from yesterday focused on HIV testing. Nothing at WATE or WBIR showed up in searches. Perhaps the Metro Pulse will weigh in later this week.
But it's beyond me how a few thousand people can put on a festival celebrating gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in East Tennessee and it not be news. If our community is not even allowed to exist in the news, then we certainly won't achieve advances for equality in Tennessee.
If nothing else, coverage of Knoxville Pridefest would have provided quite a counterpoint to Rep. Stacey Campfield's (R-Knoxville) efforts to pass the Don't Say Gay bill this year as well as his complaints about OUTeach, UT-Knoxville's LGBT & Ally Resource Center. The Don't Say Gay bill was certainly on the minds of Nashville Pride festival goers as noted by the Tennessean. I can't imagine that East Tennesseans would have been hesitant to share their views IF THEY HAD BEEN ASKED.
-Chris Sanders
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