Country music stars LeAnn Rimes and
Chely Wright will headline Milwaukee's
24th
annual PrideFest, which takes place this weekend.
More than 30,000 revelers are expected
to attend the 3-day Gay Pride event that takes place each year at the
Henry Maier Festival Park.
On Saturday, Chris Crocker “edutaines”
on the Miller Lite stage, followed by rap music duo Salt-N-Pepa and
RuPaul's Drag Race Season 3 contestant Carmen Carrera.
The following night, Nashville invades
when Rimes and Wright share the stage at 7PM.
Twenty-eight-year-old Rimes is a strong
ally of the gay community. During an appearance last year with the
Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, she dedicated her final song to gay
teens who had been bullied to death.
“It's been an incredible year, but
also a very tragic year for a lot of young gay men and women who have
been taking their own lives because they can't be themselves,”
Rimes said.
When she started to choke up, an
audience member yelled out, “We love you!”
“It's really sad when people can't be
themselves,” she added before singing The Rose in a duet
with the chorus. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)
Wright is the first high-profile
country music singer to come out gay. Her coming out experience was
told in the documentary film Wish Me Away.
In April, Wright
announced she and girlfriend Lauren Blitzer are engaged to be
married.