Is the LoveLoud festival family friendly?
This opinion/information is being posted to help families make a decision about whether future LoveLoud festivals would be a good choice for your family.
Disclosure: I didn't even think about if it was a family friendly event when I purchased tickets... I knew that I had bought tickets for a musical festival that was raising money and providing support for LGBTQ+ youth. That sounded awesome to me so we signed up.
A few days before, my sister sent me a picture of one of her favorite drag queens and asked me to keep an eye out for her. She also asked me if we knew exactly what we were getting into.... and then I started wondering... what exactly AM I getting into? I started to have flashbacks of news articles covering Pride Parades full of flamboyant over-the-top marchers and vitriolic protesters. Would it be safe? Would it be comfortable? A bit worried, I checked online and found the event was advertised as "Family Friendly" so we decided to give it a go.
I wrote this blog post in case next year someone else is wondering about the experience and if it will be a good choice for their family.
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First of all, what is Family Friendly? Per Wikipedia:
A family-friendly product or service is one that is considered to be suitable for all members of an average family.
Well that doesn't help much. What is an average family? What age do you consider children old enough to handle depictions of nudity, sex, horror, profanity, racial slurs, innuendo, drug use, blasphemy, and racism? My own experience with my kids has taught me that each CHILD is different as to their sensitivity to such things so of course every family is going to be wildly different.
Since some kind of starting point is needed, I am writing this report from the viewpoint of someone who is super-conservative... in other words ... what would my mother think?? 😊
My review is of the crowd in general, the dance, musical, and spoken acts that were performed during the festival, and the visual elements showing on the screens.
CROWD:
The attendees were of all ages, from babies to grandparents.
We saw a few couples of the same sex holding hands but there was very little physical contact between ANY type of couple. We saw a few transgender men with great clothes and boots and hats (anyone that can look that good in 101 degree heat totally gets credit in my book). Their outfits were flamboyant but not revealing or inappropriate.
From my experience, the crowds at RSL games are MUCH more edgy and physically demonstrative.
The crowd was just a normal crowd that you would see in any type of public setting in Utah. It was surprisingly "vanilla".
It was fun to look at all the different shirts people were wearing. Most had some type of rainbow or equality statement and EVERYTHING I saw was supportive, loving, and accepting. There was absolutely nothing that any reasonable person could consider offensive or demeaning. There were several people wearing BYU hats and T-shirts and I remember thinking that they were kinda brave... but no one said a thing that I saw.
I personally felt the crowd was EXTRA nice - I mean this festival is about support and kindness and the crowd really stepped up to the bar. One funny moment was when I was walking behind a young couple (16? 17?) who were talking about how surprised they were that there were no protesters at the event (they actually sounded REALLY disappointed hahaha).
BOOTHS: There were official vendors selling merchandise for the festival itself plus some of the individual performers, some great photo booth opportunities, and several small booths for different civic groups (Ogden Pride, Provo Pride, Mormons Building Bridges, Affirmation, Encircle, etc). They had activities you could do to earn pins, temporary tattoos, etc. There were also booths selling food, drinks, snowies, and other treats.
Okay now for CONTENT:
NUDITY: None. Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons showed off his new fit physique by just wearing basketball shorts during his performance. It was 100+ degrees and he moved A LOT... so to me it just made sense. I think the drummer may have been shirtless as well. There was also a dance routine between two men where they just wore capri type stretch pants.
SEX: None. Granted... I didn't see all of the acts and I couldn't understand all the words of every song either - but out of what I heard there was nothing shocking.
There was as a modern dance routine between two male dancers that represented a person looking at themselves in the mirror and accepting what they saw. There was a lot of physical touching and at the end, the men passionately kissed. My husband had left the stands to go fill some water bottles and my kids all said they were super glad Dad hadn't seen that part.
HORROR: None
PROFANITY: We heard the "F" word about 8 times ... and 7 of them were by Mike Shinoda (previously of Linkin Park). He was rapping and I sometimes wasn't even sure if I had heard it correctly. I sometimes didn't hear it AT ALL but my teenager would notice and subtly peek at me wondering if I had noticed it hahaha.
There may have also been a few hells and damns, but nothing else really stood out besides the monologue mentioned below under the "Blasphemy" situation.
RACIAL SLURS: None heard or noticed
HORROR: None
DRUG USE: None heard or noticed. I am super naive about these things and may not have caught onto any innuendos
BLASPHEMY:
One performer told a story of how she joined an Episcopalian church because of a crush she had another girl in the congregation (she then added, "Jokes on you, God eh?"). She also said "Someone asked me 'how can you consider yourself a Christian when you're gay' and I said to her 'how can you be a B**tch and consider yourself a Christian?' " (I mean she TOTALLY has a point but it was kinda against the theme for the night).
Dan Reynolds, the front-man for Imagine Dragons, introduced himself as a Mormon man that is passionate about loving everyone. He made the point several times that he is religious himself, he does not hate religion, and is just passionate that we love and accept EVERYONE.
RACISM: Nothing I heard or saw
OVERALL:
Musically, every person that bought a ticket totally got their money's worth. Imagine Dragons was seriously fantastic. I also really enjoyed Zedd. The stadium was just rocking.
The messages shared were overall wonderful. I didn't really enjoy the Westminster Slam Poetry group as it was a little screamy but that was at the far end of the spectrum.
Elissa loved when Tim Cook (the CEO of Apple) took the stage to Panic at the Disco's "High Hopes". He shared an inspiring message of living your truth and embracing who you are.
“I stand before you tonight as an uncle, a sports nut, a CEO, a lover of the beautiful Utah outdoors, and a proud, gay American. I come to deliver a simple message that I want every LGBT person to hear and to believe.
You are a gift to the world. A unique and special gift, just the way you are. Your life matters. … My heart breaks when I see kids struggling to conform to a society or a family that doesn’t accept them. Struggling to be what someone else thinks is normal. Find your truth, speak your truth, live your truth.
Let me tell you, ‘normal’ just might be the worst word ever created. We are not all supposed to be the same, feel the same, or think the same. And there is nothing wrong with you.
I know that life can be dark and heavy, and sometimes might seem unreasonable and unbearable, but just as night turns to day, know that darkness is always followed by light. You will feel more comfortable in our own skin, attitudes will change. Life will get better and you will thrive.”
Over and over again Dan Reynolds begged the youth in attendance to remember they are important. They are needed. And that the suicide problem with our youth in Utah HAS GOT TO STOP.
“I wish you could see how much we care about you, how much we love you, how much we support you, how much we stand with you,” Reynolds said. “I hope that you know you are needed. We need you. I don’t want to hear any more stories of youth taking their lives in Utah. We must change our culture. We must change the way we see each other.”
He thanked the crowd for coming and said “I know there are people here tonight on all sides. That’s the beauty of it. " And he was right. We got in the car and from SLC to Nephi we talked about subjects such as gay rights - the idea that God loves his children - that (THANKFULLY) it is never our job to judge but only to love love love love love. We talked about how stinking HARD it would be to be LDS and gay and what we could do. We talked about the beliefs of our church and what that means to us as members who support those teachings but also live in a world where our lack of support of gay marriage is seen as hateful (this is ROUGH for me people... it took YEARS for me to come to a good place about this). We talked about how we feel mankind is inherently good.
It was seriously BEAUTIFUL. And HOPEFUL. And GOOD. And considering that igniting such conversations is the MISSION of LoveLoud, I think the experience was totally of value to our family.
3 comments:
I'm so glad you went and had a good experience. Love you all!
Thank you for this. I soooo wanted to be there. I truly believe Love is Love and often worry about the gay youth I know that are being raised in the LDS church. I have to admit, I have reached a point of cynicism, and whenever I see a quote from an LDS leader I tend to think the words "unless you're gay..." after it. For example, Russell M. Nelson Said "Our Savior's atonement made eternal life a possibility and immortality a reality for all"... unless you're gay. Many of the LDS families I know truly love their gay kids, and try to do right by them, but with that said, I also know of quite a few kids who were kicked out of their parents' homes and disowned. People have often asked my why I left the LDS church, and truly fair treatment for all is one of the primary reasons for my decision. When I was in college, and dancing, the majority of my male dance partners were gay men. I saw how the LDS culture treated them, and I never understood why the rules changed because of who you loved. I have heard the defense that "The bible says homosexuality is wrong" Ok...but the bible also tells us a lot of other rules that we are ok to ignore. I don't understand how we can pick and choose which rules are "MUSTS" to adhere to and which rules are ok to toss aside. It has never made sense to me. I have often thought about the bible and the rules and have over simplified it in my brain to think of God as the loving parent of a bunch of kids, and He is going on a business trip for week. He says something like "I'm going to be away for awhile, here is a list of the things I would like for you to do/not do while I am away. Take care of each other, I will be back soon." Meanwhile, one of the kids has a ball and is playing with it outside. Another of the kids sees that the first kid has crossed the road with the ball, and realizes that "Do Not Cross the Road" was on the list of stuff that God/ Dad said not to do. Second Kid doesn't know why First Kid is across the road. Maybe they went there on their own, maybe they were pushed over there by someone else, maybe the ball rolled over and they ran across to retrieve it. Who knows? But now Second Kid says "You have crossed the road. The rules clearly say you may not cross the road. You broke the rules, therefore you are out of the family and may not enter our home again." Or, maybe second kid says something like "We guess you can come in, but don't touch anything. You broke the rules, and we know we can't kick you out of the house completely, so we'll let you stay here, but only as long as you don't act like you might cross the road again. In fact, why don't we get you some therapy."
I know that in this analogy I have over simplified things, and I know my view that homosexuality is NOT a choice is often tinder for a fueled debate. I appreciate the work that Dan Reynolds and the Love Loud Organization is doing to spread the message that homophobic based suicides, and in fact all suicides must stop. I thank you for your review of the experience and love you dearly. Love = Love
https://youtu.be/ytL0OBltspc
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