LGBTQ event: West Palm country music star highlights annual Palm Beach Pride Festival

LAKE WORTH BEACH — Therapy goats, drag queens and a West Palm Beach-born country music singer are just a few attractions to expect this weekend at the Palm Beach County’s biggest annual celebration of its LGBTQ community.

The 35th annual Palm Beach Pride Festival, hosted by the nonprofit Compass Community Center, will take place Saturday, March 23 and Sunday, March 24, in Bryant Park along Lake Avenue in downtown Lake Worth Beach. Headlining the event will be West Palm Beach-born country music singer Brooke Eden, who is slated to perform a concert Sunday.

The Palm Beach Pride Parade will also be Sunday, March 24. The parade, which starts at 11 a.m., follows Lucerne Avenue west, then cuts south turns south onto Lake and continues east where it ends at Bryant Park, about a mile away. The festival will also feature family-friendly activities such as face painting and goat-petting.

Best known for her songs “Act Like You Don’t” and “Left You For Me,” Eden grew up in Loxahatchee. When Eden started singing, “I was told you can either be a country singer or you can be in an out, queer relationship, but you cannot be both,” she said in September during an NBC News interview. She revealed in 2021 she had been in a relationship for years with her girlfriend, Hilary Hoover, who she married that year.

Eden released “No Shade” that year, a song about leaving a stormy relationship. The music video was shot at a waterfront bar in Palm Beach County. In it, Eden plays a bartender who works a shift there before going home to Hoover at night. The song has been heard nearly 1.7 million times on Spotify.

Our Sister’s Place, a Tequesta nonprofit that helps domestic violence victims, will feature baby goats for anyone to pet. The kids’ purpose is to help comfort anyone at the event who wants to talk to Our Sister’s Place about services they offer.

Getting help should “be associated with being fun and playful, as opposed to something generally seen as unapproachable,” said Jamie Nelson, a program advocate for the nonprofit.

The festival will also feature the usual attractions, such as drag queens performances and the rainbow-colored parade along Lucerne and Lake. There will also be pet adoptions, Compass spokesperson Michael Riordan said, along with blank canvasses where attendees can paint “words of affirmation” that they can take home as souvenirs.

Will Palm Beach Pride festival address Florida's laws affecting the LGBTQ community?

A federal court on March 11 effectively struck down big parts of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, dubbed the Parental Rights in Education Act by the lawmaker who wrote it. But Palm Beach Pride will not have official celebrations of it or official messaging on anything to do with laws affecting LGBTQ people, Riordan said, because the IRS prohibits nonprofits from engaging even in indirect activity for or against any political candidate.

Some Compass supporters take issue with the festival accepting money from companies that support anti-LGBTQ politicians, Riordan said. One local example is Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light, which has given money to lawmakers such as the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law's author, Republican state Rep. Joe Harding, or Treasure Coast-Palm Beach County Republican Congressman Brian Mast, a 2020 election denier who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022 that codifies interracial and same-sex marriage into federal law.

Compass works with pro-LGBTQ groups in those companies, Riordan said.

RELATED: What the settlement in so-called 'Don't Say Gay' lawsuit means for Palm Beach County schools

RELATED: West Palm Beach will contribute $166,000 to rebuild of iconic LGBTQ bar Roosters

RELATED: 5 best Lake Worth Beach restaurants to put on your radar during Palm Beach Pride festival

“We recognize that there are LGBTQ people that are part of these organizations just as much as they part of the community," he said. "When we have sponsors, it’s because we have relationships with these people. Their work with us helps us with empowering enriching the lives of LGBTQ people and those affected by HIV.”

The public is invited April 9 to a meeting at Compass at 201 North Dixie Highway to offer “constructive ideas” about festival sponsors, Riordan said.

And to those who want to stamp out rights for gays, Riordan says, “Every freedom-loving American should support us because if we can live our lives the way we see fit in a free society, that means anybody can live their lives the way they see fit in a free society.”

Palm Beach Pride Festival in Lake Worth Beach

When: Saturday, March 23 and Sunday, March 24 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Palm Beach Pride parade starts at 11 a.m. on Sunday, March 24. The parade route follows Lucerne Avenue west, then cuts south turns south onto Lake and continues east where it ends at Bryant Park.

Where: Bryant Park located at 100 S Golfview Road in Lake Worth Beach

Tickets: Check here for tickets to the two-day event.

Chris Persaud is The Palm Beach Post's data reporter. Send tips to cpersaud@pbpost.com

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach Pride Festival 2024 features Brooke Eden in Lake Worth