It’s that season once again! The music is getting brattier, the shorts are getting shorter, and the gays are prideful and ready to make it everyone’s problem. Whether you’re a part of the LGBTQ+ community or an ally, Pride has arrived and you better be ready to celebrate!
In 2024, we rounded up 20 ways to celebrate Pride in June and all year. This year, we knew we had to go bigger and better. So please enjoy this updated and expanded guide to celebrating Pride in 2025!
1. Go to Pride! For our local fur-ends, Denver Pride is June 28 – 29. Find a Pride event wherever you are on the US Pride Calendar.
2. Go to a drag show! Whether with family or friends, seeing a drag show is always a good time and a great way to support local drag artists, kings and queens! (The Clocktower Cabaret in Denver is a great place to start!)
3. Go to drag bingo! No passive observers, here. Get in on the action with everyone’s favorite game of pure chance. May we recommend local institution Hamburger Mary’s?
4. Go to drag story hour! Give the whole family a fun, imaginative space to defy gender roles and celebrate play. Can you think of anything better than being read to by a fabulous queen in the spirit of love and acceptance? We can’t!
5. Yes, we are really into drag this year. But guess what? You can be too! Learn the art of drag from Trixie Mattel or your own favorite queen.
6. Run in the Denver Pride 5K.
7. Get some popcorn, sit back and enjoy some queer cinema. Starter list: Bottoms; I Saw the TV Glow; Paris is Burning; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Love, Simon
8. Share your pronouns! Although there’s still a lot of work to do for LGBTQ+ people to be protected and safe, sharing your pronouns is a small thing that anyone can do to ensure people use the right pronouns and normalize the discussion of pronouns in the first place.
9. Donate. If you can, there are so many wonderful non-profit organizations that seek to help and protect LGBTQ+ people. Start with this list of LGBTQ organizations.
10. Educate yourself on queer history. Pride has evolved so much since Stonewall. It is important to know and understand the history and who fought to get the community to where it is today. Education is the beginning of allyship and understanding.
11. Listen to some gay tunes! The gays have ruled the music industry for years. Gay really is the sound of the summer. I mean, Doechii, Lady Gaga, Remi Wolf, Troye Sivan, Orville Peck—the list goes on.
12. Know where your money’s going. Allyship is not supporting rainbow capitalism or patronizing businesses that exploit the LGBTQ+ community for profit. Shop local, shop small, shop queer-friendly, and definitely shop queer.
13. Call out rainbow-washing. Go beyond voting with your dollars. When you see big brands cashing in on Pride, ask them publicly what they are doing to support the queer community all year ’round. Or maybe share a friendly reminder of how they may actually be harming LGBTQIA+ folks with their politics and practices.
14. Check out some queer Denver neighborhoods like the RiNo Art District (one of the Top Five Emerging Gay Neighborhoods of America) and the historically queer Capitol Hill.
15. Support Denver’s bid to host the 2030 Gay Games! The city’s already secured a spot among the top 10 contenders, and Denver’s bid committee is campaigning hard to make the games “a platform not just for athletic prowess but also for unity, empowerment, and individual potential, all set against the backdrop of the city’s breathtaking scenery and world-class facilities.”
16. Go to a farmer’s market! I mean, what’s gayer than supporting local businesses and going to a farmer’s market?
17. Dabble in some queer literature. From Love Makes a Family, to The House on the Cerulean Sea, to Giovanni’s Room—there are so many queer stories that there is no excuse not to read rainbow this summer.
18. Meet Miss Chief Eagle Testickle at the Denver Art Museum. Interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman refocuses historical art around Indigenous perspectives with a generous dose of visibility to Two-Spirit and other queer identifying communities. Miss Chief, the artist’s alter ego, can be found throughout the various works in History is Painted by the Victors, on display through August 17.
19. Send your LGBTQ+ friends some money for being so cool! Signed, a queer recent grad.
20. Get some Pride prints! Shameless self-plug—if you’re looking to rainbow up your printing game, YellowDog’s got you covered!
21. Volunteer (or should I say volun-queer?). Volunteering offers a unique opportunity to show support and advocate for equality and acceptance in all communities. Gay for Good has chapters all over the USA that mobilize LGBTQ+ and ally volunteers to help around their community and make a difference!
22. Hang out with queer folk! Pride is all about building community. The Center on Colfax hosts groups, lounges, board game nights and more opportunities to meet new people, chat and make safe spaces for queer people!
23. SAY GAY! AND LESBAIN! AND TRANS! AND NON-BINARY! Under our current administration, we are experiencing an influx of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric in the United States. This rise of conservatism is directly harming LGBTQ+ people, especially trans-POC youth, both legally and socially. The LGBTQ+ community has been and continues to be silenced by law, but we won’t be erased—we will be heard.
24. Call your reps! Every voice matters. Especially now, elected officials need to be constantly reminded just how important LGBTQIA+ rights are and how much the general public want those rights to be protected. Keep reminding them.
25. Love yourself! Because if you don’t, in the wise words of RuPaul, “how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?!”
by YellowDog.