OutSpokane's Heritage Pride Institute spotlights the history of our community's struggle for equality, annually featuring a different individual, advocate or artist whose work has advanced GLBT civil rights. The Institute consists of youth and community-wide forums, plus an evening meet-and-greet session with the year's specially chosen honoree, who also usually serves as the Pride Parade's Grand Marshal.

We established the Heritage Pride Institute in 2006 in response to a GLBT community request for more information about movement landmarks and leaders. We understand how important it is to recognize our heroes — and to educate our GLBTQA youth, and remind ourselves, of their legacy. It's hard to forge a path forward if we don't know how we got where we are. The rights many of us now take for granted were won with the blood, sweat and tears of many brave pioneers.

2009 Honoree

Marsha Botzer

“What keeps me working is the great dream of justice and equality across all our peoples,” notes Marsha Botzer, OutSpokane’s 4th annual Heritage Pride Institute honoree. “There is, in my opinion, no better way to spend your heartbeats than in the service of this hope; it is a dream that we must make real, not just for Transgender, Queer, Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay people, but for all, in a progressive world of respect and powerful peace.”

Botzer has been walking her talk for years, which is why she was chosen as the 2009 Heritage Pride Institute headliner. As is the custom, she’ll lead a forum for youth at Odyssey Youth Center in the afternoon on June 12, followed by a no-charge reception and a community presentation in the evening at the MAC. HPI was established in 2006 to pay tribute to the legacy of those who champion the advancement of human rights in the GLBTQ community and beyond.

A founding member of Equal Rights Washington, Botzer currently serves on that organization’s board of directors. The Seattle native is also co-chair of the Seattle chapter of the Safe Schools Coalition and since 1996 has been a member of the Department of Social and Health Services Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Advisory board, which she chaired from 1999 to 2005.

Co-chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from 2005-2006 and the Seattle Commission for Sexual Minorities from 2001-2002, Botzer did stints on the Pride Foundation board and as a reviewer for the Pride Scholarship Program, and worked with the Seattle Women’s Commission from 1987-1991. In 2008, she was national co-chair of the Obama Pride Campaign.

Botzer earned her master’s degree in psychology at Antioch University Seattle in 1990 and continues to be connected with the institution, serving on the Board of Visitors, a body akin to a local board of directors.

“I have been happily partnered for 23 years,” she declares, “and am thankful for the courage and mutual support our lives together have given us. Kimberly is my friend, as well as my loved one.”

Botzer’s honors include the Community Service and Leadership Award from the Greater Seattle Business Association and the Human Rights Campaign Equality Award (2003), the Virginia Prince Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Federation for Gender Education (2004), and the Task Force Leadership Award (2007).

She is especially proud of her groundbreaking efforts to form Seattle’s Ingersoll Gender Center, which she established informally in the 1970s and officially incorporated as a nonprofit in 1984. Botzer quotes Robert Ingersoll, whose name graces the center: "The Time to Be Happy is Now, the Place to be Happy is Here, and the Way to be Happy is to Make Others So!"

Past Heritage Pride Institute Honorees

In 2006, Internationally acclaimed author Patricia Nell Warren, whose 1974 novel The Front Runner challenged the mores of our nation regarding same-sex orientation, was the Heritage Pride Institute's first honoree.

In 2007, we were pleased to host Grethe Cammermeyer, the highest-ranking officer in the United States armed forces to acknowledge her homosexuality while still in the service. She successfully challenged the military's policy banning homosexuals prior to the implementation of what's now commonly called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

In 2008, we were able to bring two-spirit Steven Barrios (Long Time Holy Rain), a Native American community activist and HIV/AIDS educator who lives on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning, Montana.