LA Pride Puts the “T” ahead of LGB for Annual Festival

Board members say transgender issues need to be out in front publicly and changing how it identifies itself is just a first step.

You may notice something different if you visit West Hollywood for the 38th annual Pride celebration this weekend.

The "T" in LGBT is now first.

Christopher Street West, which organizes LAPride, renamed the event "the TLGB Celebration."

"People have talked about," said Steve Ganzell, a Christopher Street West board member.

"This was the right time to do. Granzell said the organization switched the now common LGBT acronym, which stands for Lesbain, gay, bi-sexual and transgender, to TLGB for this year’s festival because of a growing concern that the transgender community was underserved.

"This was an element of our community that were still dealing with the fact that they were incredibly vulnerable and a lot of them were still suffering incredible kinds of hate crimes," Ganzell said.

Transgender issues have made significant headlines this year.

Time Magazine made history by putting Laverne Cox, the transgender actress in the hit Netflix series "Orange Is the New Black," on its cover.

A 7 minute YouTube video about raising a transgender child just went viral with more than 5 million views.

Yet, journalists such as Katie Couric and Piers Morgan struggled with understanding the transgender community and struggled with the topic on their shows.

Ganzell says that is just part of the reason the group choose to have "T" come first.

Its inline with the festival theme this year which is "Welcome to our family."

Ganzell says the plaintiffs of Prop 8, two of which are from Burbank, will serve as community marshals of the Pride Parade on Sunday.

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