The fourth annual celebration of Davis County Pride — themed “Shimmer, Shine and Show Your Pride” — is set for Saturday from noon-6 p.m. at Layton Commons Park in Layton. The celebration is free and open to everyone.

Davis County Pride Treasurer and board member Jake Boyle told the Standard-Examiner that the celebration has come a long way since it began.

“It started five years ago after the Davis County School District banned Pride flags in the classrooms,” he said. “We organized, real quickly, kind of a rally around that. It was real small, it was at a park and that was kind of the catalyst that got us started. Since then, we’ve grown tremendously.”

He said the festival this year has 120 vendors and exhibitors along with nine food trucks and two stages full of entertainment for festival goers. The festival will even feature an all-queer marching band and the “love train” where organizers and guests alike march throughout the park. This year’s festival is anticipated to draw 4,000-5,000 guests.

Among the new activities is “Gearn Storytelling” which will be hosting the new second stage.

“We’ll have people reciting poems and sharing their stories of coming out, overcoming adversity,” Boyle said.

Davis County Pride 2025 comes as several similar celebrations have faced especially stiff headwinds this year in terms of sponsorships and funding as politicians have ramped up campaigns against the LGBTQ+ community and other vulnerable peoples.

Boyle said Davis County Pride hasn’t been impacted near as much as some larger festivals.

“We rely on different funding sources than the traditional corporate sponsors,” he said. “We’re one of the biggest of the small festivals, so most of our funding comes from Project Rainbow Utah. They donate $3,000 each year to our festival and we earn another $3,000 through community donations. The money that Project Rainbow gives us is a matching donation. On top of that, we try to keep our festival fees low. We only require an $80 registration fee for exhibitors and vendors to participate.”

He said the majority of the money comes from those vendors and exhibitors but that they still have a handful of corporate sponsors within the community.

Still, Boyle said organizers are very aware and cautious of the current political climate.

“We feel real fortunate that we haven’t had a whole lot of pushback,” he said. “Every year, we’ve had some sort of counterprotest show up at our Pride festival. It’s generally pretty small. We also are extremely grateful to the City of Layton who hosts our festival at Layton Commons Park. … We rent the entire park, and even though it is a public park, it’s considered a private event, so any of those counterprotesters are required to leave the premises. They can practice their First Amendment across the street, and the City of Layton has been really good in supporting and enforcing that.”

He added Davis County Pride has consulted with Out & Ready to develop emergency response plans and deescalation training.

“I feel like we’re better prepared,” he said.

Boyle said it’s especially important to move forward with Pride at a time like this.

“Pride, like any other year, is all about celebrating our presence in the community and that we’re here, that we exist, that we’re proud — this year, more than other years, because it seems like there’s a larger discussion and attack on diversity, equity and inclusion,” he said. “From the current administration and from a lot of the media, diversity, equity and inclusion feels like a bad thing or a scary thing or something that needs to be done away with or something that gives unfair advantage to individuals that are undeserving of it. In reality, at least from our perspective, diversity, equity and inclusion is just existing and existing on an equal playing field. Having a festival of this scale in a very conservative county within Utah just demonstrates it’s about love, visibility, acceptance, that we belong in the community and that we’re contributing members of the community.”

For more information on Davis County Pride, visit https://www.daviscountypride.org/.