Welcome to our Pride issue. At a time when LGBTQ+ people endure further marginalization and even more inhumane treatment, we are especially proud to dedicate this space to all things Pride.
In these pages, Baltimore Beat Arts and Culture Editor Teri Henderson writes about the “rapture and refuge” of spaces dedicated to queer life.
“They are sanctuaries where folks on the fringe of society — the marginalized — can congregate, find community, and locate kinship,” Henderson writes.
“They’re where people flirt, fall in love, fight, order rounds of shots, lose their keys, stumble, place dirty coins in jukeboxes, or queue up TouchTunes. With each of these small, communal acts, we affirm that we are alive.”
Here, she is focused on Leon’s of Baltimore, which dubs itself as the city’s oldest gay bar. Bartenders at the Mount Vernon institution say all are invited to sit, have a drink, and even belt out a tune or two during karaoke night.
“I tell people all the time: ‘It’s just karaoke. It ain’t the Meyerhoff,’” bartender Stacey Q told Henderson.
Trans people have always existed and will continue to exist.
Trans people have always existed and will continue to exist. The people behind Baltimore Center Stage’s Trans History Project want to make sure we all know that.
“The brainchild of Baltimore Center Stage Artist-in-Residence Bo Frazier, the Trans History Project aims to develop 10 new plays about the history of gender nonconformity, drawing from a national pool of artist applicants,” writes Rahne Alexander. “In all, 10 transgender and gender non-conforming writers will be placed in two-year development residencies across the country.”
“The purpose of this project is not only to pay TGNC artists and boost representation, but also to prove, hopefully once and for all, that we have always existed, the binary isn’t real and that anti-trans hatred is the thing that has not always existed,” Frazier told Alexander.
We asked you, our readers, to share creative expressions that illustrate what Pride means to you. Please enjoy the essays, images, photos and poems that you shared with us. We only wish we had more space to publish them all.
Dominic Griffin reviewed “Naz & Maalik,” a 10-year-old independent film that exactly captures the double surveillance state that people who are both Muslim and queer live under right now, in 2025.
Finally, learn more about “We Are… Proud,” an exhibit at the Maryland Center for History and Culture that takes a deeply personal look at queer life here in Baltimore and, more broadly, in the state of Maryland.
“While the narratives in our LGTBQ+ collections are not yet comprehensive, we hope that increasing representation in the museum will help queer Marylanders know that we value their stories,” writes Abby Doran, assistant curator at the museum.
Thank you for reading and happy Pride!