The early summer heat didn’t dissuade hundreds of Morrisville residents from attending the town’s Pride in the Park event Friday. Families with children spread out on picnic blankets on the lawn, neighbors milled together with popsicles and ice cream, played drag bingo, and stopped to check out vendors selling everything from jewelry to saris to henna tattoos.
And while a Beaufort, N.C.-based concrete company that was approved as a vendor for the event tried to make its presence known, it was largely obscured by activists surrounding and blockading its tent with rainbow flags and umbrellas, its messaging drowned out by queer anthems and Disney songs.
For at least the second year, the Town of Morrisville approved an application from the anti-LGBTQ concrete company, whom the INDY is choosing not to name, as a vendor for its annual Pride event, Pride in the Park. Morrisville is one of the few municipalities in Wake County that solely funds and hosts an annual Pride event, according to a town council member who spoke with the INDY, and residents were dismayed that the town approved a vendor known for promoting what they called anti-LGBTQ and transphobic messaging.
Some residents and vendors, including Eli Cameron, a local transgender artist and community organizer, skipped the event in protest. A vendor who ran their own independent grassroots Pride market in 2021, Cameron said they had been supportive of the town’s early efforts to host its own Pride event for the past two years.
“I was accepted as a vendor this year, but I’ve stepped back from participating because I cannot risk further exposure to hate speech under the guise of “free speech” at a Pride celebration,” Cameron wrote in an email to the INDY.
“After last year’s experience with the transphobic and homophobic vendor who is being allowed to return again this year, I’ll just stick with Apex and Raleigh Pride events,” wrote resident Kenny Vandergriff on the Town of Morrisville’s Facebook page. “Sorry Morrisville.” (In recent years, Pride Month has run up against conservative politics in parts of Wake County, as the INDY previously reported).
In the leadup to the event, Cameron and others had made inquiries to town staff about whether the vendor would be approved again in 2025. They were told that, due to the public nature of the event, the town was legally obligated to “allow participation from all groups who meet basic registration requirements” because of Constitutional requirements, including protecting First Amendment rights.
A communications staffer from the town sent along a similar statement to the INDY on Monday.
“The Town took appropriate steps to ensure that the event remained a safe and vibrant experience for everyone attending,” the statement reads. “After research, the Town Attorney advised us that, because this is a government-sponsored event held on public property, the Equal Protection Clause of both the state and federal Constitutions prohibited Morrisville from excluding vendors based on their opinions or religious beliefs.”
On the day, the concrete company was given tent space at the entrance to the park, away from most of the other vendors and far from the lawn where the action, including the drag bingo and performances from the bands 22 Strings and Against the Odds, was taking place. The company’s three representatives brought no goods to sell, but had two concrete millstones, painted with rainbow and trans pride colors. In fliers distributed at last year’s event, and in response to a request for comment from the INDY, the company said that the millstones represent Bible verses, making allusions to pedophilia and Babylon as a symbol of sin.
The group’s tent was quickly surrounded by some two dozen protesters obscuring its visibility with umbrellas and flags emblazoned with rainbow stripes and trans pride pink and turquoise.
Morrisville town council member Anne Robotti was among the protesters, carrying a sign that read “Do not engage” in rainbow letters and humming along to “Let It Go” from Frozen. She says her strategy is to oppose the group symbolically, and not to engage with them because engagement is what they want.
“I don’t know why these haters from outside of Morrisville have to come and disrupt our event,” she says. “Just their presence makes people feel unsafe. And I think that’s their objective.”
Robotti said, as an ally to the LGBTQ community, her objective is to preserve other people’s joy.
“For me, it’s all about positivity and love, and for me, that is just negativity and bigotry and hate, and I just don’t allow it in my life,” she says. “It’s very triggering for people, and it’s just not fair. It’s not fair. This is the antithesis of that message over there with Jesus’s name in their mouth. Jesus was all about marginalized populations of people that no one else would love or could love. And Jesus was like, ‘Nope, I love them.’”
Despite the literal and metaphorical millstones the concrete company dragged onto the scene, Pride in the Park was a hit.
“Great event! I loved that the hate dude was completely walled in by Pride folks!!! Incredible!,” wrote Betsy Burnham O’Connor on the town’s Facebook page. “Band was fun, too!”
Still, if the Town of Morrisville wants the event to truly be representative, it will have to find a way to exclude participants who make others feel unsafe. Eli Cameron, the vendor who voiced concerns to the town council, further explained their reasoning in an email sent to town council members on Friday.
“I would like to respectfully challenge the idea that participation as a vendor is the same as a protected right to free speech in public space,” Cameron wrote. “Vendor booths are not public forums; they are curated, regulated, and limited opportunities meant for small businesses, nonprofits, and community groups offering goods or services. If a group wants to protest, they have every legal right to do so—but that right does not include occupying a vendor booth under false pretenses, especially if they are not selling products or engaging in commerce.”
Instead of attending Pride in the Park, Cameron said they vended at Winston-Salem’s Pride cookout, “a smaller but grass roots community effort” this weekend.
It was a decision, they said, that was “grounded in safety.”
“To be clear: my concern isn’t about protest or stifling anyone’s free speech—it’s about inappropriate platforming,” Cameron wrote. “The issue is that the town continues to approve a vendor who isn’t there to sell, but to push an agenda. Taking away space from local business and groups in a sanctioned space at a Pride event legitimizes their presence in ways that harm the community.”
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