So we had to divert the parade,' O'Donovan recalls. We terrified the horses: they were bucking and stuff, and the police were freaking out about it. 'There used to be a stop at the horses and carriages. 'I wanted to make a statement.'īut when, on that June day, the crowd turned onto South Temple and passed Temple Square's south gate, things went buck-wild. I grew up Mormon, and they tortured me, and wounded me really deeply,' O'Donovan says in a conference room in the Utah Pride Center's new Main Street digs, almost 30 years after organizing that march. 'It was important to me to kind of flip the finger at that church.

The day after Gay Pride Day in Sunnyside Park, about 200 people congregated on the State Capitol's steps to hear speeches from prominent gay and lesbian leaders, then marched down Main Street, turned right onto South Temple and passed the Salt Lake Temple.

The previous year, in 1990, O'Donovan had organized Salt Lake City's first Gay and Lesbian Pride March, commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It wasn't symbolism, imagery or beauty that made Connell O'Donovan decide to finish the second annual Gay and Lesbian Pride March at Washington Square, the esteemed park and home of the jaw-droppingly gorgeous City and County Building.