Mid-South Pride is a non-profit corporation located in Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

. Mid-South Pride was founded in May 2004, to take over the work formerly done by Memphis Pride. Mid-South Pride produces the annual Pride Parade, Festival and Picnic for Memphis as well as other events that reflect the history of Pride in the LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 community.

Mid-South Pride is led by a 9 member, unpaid, board of directors and relies on volunteers and community support to product the annual GLBT pride events. One of the major elements that separates Mid-South Pride from other pride organizations is the requirement that all events must be paid in full, so that the organization never takes on more than it can actually pay for.

Mid-South Pride is members of the International GLBT Pride association, Interpride, and members of the International Festival and Events Association. IFEA

Mid-South Pride, Memphis Pride, and the Mid-South Pride logo are all owned by Mid-South Pride. Their use here has been with permission.

Gary Wilkerson, the founding President of Mid-South Pride and one of the Regional Directors for InterPride's Southern United States Region died on September 28, 2007. Sean Alexander and Kent Hamson are the current co-chairs.

In June 2008 Mid-South Pride brought Peterson Toscano

Peterson Toscano

Peterson Toscano is a playwright, an actor, a blogger, a stand-up comedian, and a gay activist. Before accepting his gay orientation, he spent nearly two decades submitting to ex-gay treatment and conversion therapy designed to alter his gay orientation and gender differences...

, a former client of the Memphis-based ex-gay

Ex-gay

The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that seek to get people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires, to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship...

 program Love in Action

Love In Action

Love In Action is an ex-gay, Christian ministry founded in 1973 by Frank Worthen, John Evans, and Kent Philpott. The program was originally founded in Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco.-History:...

 and an outspoken ex-ex-gay

Ex-ex-gay

The term ex-ex-gay is used to describe people who at one time participated in the ex-gay movement in an attempt to change their sexual orientation to heterosexual, but who then later went on to publicly accept that their sexual orientation falls under the LGBT umbrella...

, back to Memphis to serve as a grand marshal

Grand Marshal

Grand Marshal is a ceremonial, military, or political office of very high rank. The term has its origins with the word "Marshal" with the first usage of the term "Grand Marshal" as a ceremonial title for certain religious orders...

of the pride parade and to perform.

External links

• Web site http://www.MidSouthPRide.org; or call 866-502-9MSP (9677)

• Interpride http://www.interpride.org