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The 23rd annual New Jersey Pride parade and festival had a banner year, by some estimates drawing over 20,000 people to the city to celebrate. 

City businesses and homes flew rainbow flags all weekend to show their support of the LGBT population. 

“I have been with Jersey Pride since the very first year and I say with confidence that this was a largest, most successful event ever,” said Jersey Pride President Laura Pople. “The parade was larger as was the festival itself.  More than 20,000 were in attendance.”

The parade stepped off from City Hall at noon. Local businesses and community groups that cater to the gay population like the Q-Spot, Cameo Bar, Hotel Tides and Trinity Church were represented.

It was the first Pride celebration held in the city since the gay population was granted the right to same-sex marriage in October, marking it as a special time of celebration and unity for the majority of festival attendees.

Click here to see a Sun Facebook photo album of the event.

“I think this event serves as a celebratory event for all of the accomplishments we have made in New Jersey this year,” said Christian Fuscarino, 23, founder of The Pride Network. “I think people are coming with less of a mission, and more of a purpose of community.”

Leading the parade was a banner that read “A State of Equality,” which showed two rainbow rings interlocked with each other in front of an outline of the state.

Cookman and Grand avenues were lined with spectators, with most camped out on the bridge over Sunset Lake. Following the parade, the Pride festival saw Bradley Park filled with concert spectators, food and beverage vendors, civil rights groups, health care groups and craft vendors. Portions of the national AIDS quilt were displayed in a large tent.

“I just love the unity,” said Victoria Courtez, Ms. Gay NJ 2013, “the coming together of gays, lesbians, transgenders and the entire community — and the food.” 

“I love how all these gay people are here at one time and are being nice to each other — sometimes gay men can be fierce, but here everyone is nice and genuine, and smiling. It’s very rare you see that,” said Michael Anthony, a 21-year-old Egg Harbor Township resident. 

“Having been involved the entire time, it is hard not to reflect on the changes— both to the event itself and our community — these past two decades plus,” Pople said. “We have come an incredible way, and yet the heart of the Pride event is still the same.  Celebrating NJs GLBT community.  In all our diversity.  Including families with kids and pets.  Many multigenerational families in support.  And our outdoor display of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilty, both on the grounds and as it is carried in the parade, is unique and poignant.”

Now that the hard-fought mission to win marriage equality in the state is complete, members of the LGBT population have shifted their focus to anti-bullying campaigns for school children, addressing housing for senior members of the community, and other issues that affect the gay population, serving in many cases as the architects of legislation that fight on behalf of the gay community.

“We have been and still are taking a very big role in our anti-bullying work,” said John Mikytuck, interim executive director of Garden State Equality [GSE]. The civil rights group launched their campaign to secure marriage equality in New Jersey on the Asbury Park boardwalk.

A recent study members of Garden State Equality published shows elderly members of the LGBT population now face housing discrimination. Seniors on the front lines of the LGBT movement 30 and 40 years ago, who had publicly identified themselves as lesbian or gay when it was not socially acceptable to do so, face hardship in assisted living facilities in the state, in some cases from intolerant staff members and, in some cases, from other seniors. 

“Now, in their golden years, they find they have to go back into the closet to feel safe because staff members or roommates in the facility are not accepting,” Mikytuck said.

Transgender rights are also a main focus of GSE. Organizers are spearheading a campaign that would see state law changed to allow those who identify as transgender to legally change the gender on their birth certificates without first having to undergo surgical procedures. The move seeks to accommodate those who cannot afford surgery, or who do not wish to be operated on.

“It’s a simple thing but it has huge implications for the transgender community … these people are just trying to go about their lives,” he said.

[Jersey Pride President Laura Pople returned the Sun’s request for comment after a previous version of this article was posted. This version has been updated to include her comments.]

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