Molly Pinta had a dream. When she was 12 years old, she wanted a Pride Parade in Buffalo Grove.
“I’m not being brave, I’m just being me,” said Pinta, now 13.
Her dream came true Sunday with the help of her parents, Carolyn and Bob Pinta, both teachers who spent months helping the teen plan the first-ever gay pride parade in the northwest suburb.
More than 2,000 people are estimated to have participated and thousands more attended the family-friendly parade that rolled along Checker Drive between Carry Lane and Ridgefield Lane, embracing LBGTQ in a way the community had never done before.
The Pintas raised more than $55,000 to put on the parade that attracted 50 sponsors and 90 local groups, organizations, politicians and a significant police presence.
Molly Pinta, with her rainbow-colored hair, has been recognized locally as fearless, and has been named the Youth Grand Marshal for the Chicago Gay Pride Parade June 30.
“The culminating thing is the parade, but it’s turned into so much more than that,” said Carolyn Pinta, the force behind the nonprofit Pinta Pride Project.
The Pintas formed a Gay Straight Alliance at Molly’s school, Twin Groves Middle School, which was modeled by three other Buffalo Grove schools. They were recently awarded $10,000 by the 100 Women Who Care charity event and hosted a LBGTQ prom.
On National Coming Out Day, Oct. 11, they hosted a raffle and teen romance movie fundraising, bringing in another $5,000.
The Pintas’ events have built community awareness about teen sexuality and connected 2,000 people on their BGPride Facebook page, creating a support network for both teens and their parents to consult at the time of coming out and beyond.
It was two years ago when Molly Pinta came out.
“I had my first big crush on a girl and I was like, ‘Oh, this is unique. Nobody else is female and also liking other females,’” Pinta recalled. “I was like I’m going to stay in the closet a little while. It’s comforting but also annoying. You really want to come out.”
She eventually told both of her parents.
“Oh, we knew, we absolutely knew,” said Carolyn Pinta, a Spanish teacher at Twin Groves Middle School. “This crush she had in the fall, it was very adorable. We watched it all happen. We knew for sure she had to be bisexual.
“We were thrilled for her to finally feel comfortable to say so,” Pinta added, “because we just wanted to be able to celebrate her.”
And that they did, taking it to the next level by not only organizing the parade but creating a network for area gay teens who don’t have parents like the Pintas.
“Having such supportive parents has done good things in this community,” said Molly Pinta. “It’s definitely made people question their belief and mindset.”
She spoke of friends whose parents are homophobic and they fear for the consequences of sharing their sexuality with their parents.
“You have to [stay] on the down low,” Molly Pinta said. “If they kick you out, you have nowhere to go. You have to know when it’s safe and tread lightly. Do what you have to do.”
Molly Pinta talks of many of her friends who are “stuck in the closet” as a result, but who now see an opening with the work of The Pinta Project.
“That’s why we feel all these pride things are so important,” Carolyn Pinta said, “so if they’re not being accepted at home, they know there is a whole world in the real world that does accept me, once when I get to this phase and become an adult, I will be just fine. That’s what we hope for.”
But their efforts have not come without some opposition in the form of anonymous, and so-called nasty letters. Carolyn Pinta admits there is definitely a small pocket of conservative folks in the neighborhood who criticized them for using their position as teachers and leaders in the community to tell kids it’s OK to be gay when some don’t think it is OK.
Despite that opposition, she has seen even more support from in the number of businesses, organizations, churches and schools who jumped on board to participate in the parade, along with senators and congressmen, she said.
It wasn’t until two weeks ago, however, that the village of Buffalo Grove recognized their tireless efforts with a proclamation for the parade.
Buffalo Grove Village President Beverly Sussman said the board couldn’t recognize their efforts until the Pintas received their official parade permit last month.
“We have people with different nationalities and religions, we have the whole spectrum of diversity in Buffalo Grove and this is another phase of being diverse,” Sussman said. “Here’s a young lady who wants everyone to accept and respect each other. How can you find anything wrong with someone who wants that? For a 13-year-old girl to say that, I think it’s very commendable.”
So does Bob Pinta, a math teacher at Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, who thinks that teens sharing their sexuality should be a conversation as simple as asking if someone likes pizza.
“It should be just normal like ‘tell me something about yourself,’” Bob Pinta said. “It isn’t something that should be judged or looked at differently or makes your life any more complicated than it already is.”
Molly says she can’t necessarily define herself at this point but she knows she’s changing and growing as every year passes.
“For some people, you’ve always been 100 percent sure of your sexuality but mine has been a bit fluid over the years,” Molly Pinta said.
Her mom told her she would figure it out eventually while her dad warned about labels.
“Youths attach themselves to a label and if it changes, they almost feel guilty about going back on their word,” Bob Pinta said. “Labels at her age are dangerous because if it changes, it could be you’re almost putting yourself back in the closet.”
That’s not what they want to witness moving forward.
“That’s one of the reasons we want to be so loud about this because it’s hard enough to be a teenager,” Carolyn Pinta said. “We want other people to feel comfortable being themselves at a younger age.
“We want people to feel accepted who don’t get acceptance at home,” she said of the parade. “They don’t know acceptance is out there until they see all the rainbows and all the love.”