Bristol Hospital Celebrates Pride Month With Flag-Raising Event

By Justin Muszynski, The Bristol Press

June 4, 2021

To this day, raising a rainbow flag in honor of Pride Month can cause an uproar in some communities, Bob Boudreau, an openly gay man, told a crowd of people outside Bristol Hospital on Wednesday.

Yet here in Bristol, a large crowd of mostly hospital employees gathered to watch the flag wave in front of the Brewster Road campus to promote inclusivity for all, regardless of sexual orientation. Events like this, said Boudreau, a corporator at Bristol Hospital, help to “normalize LGBTQ families.”

“It helps break those cycles of being beaten down,” Boudreau said, remarking about the crowd size, which he said was three times the size as last year, the first time Bristol Hospital held a flag-raising in honor of Pride Month.

“Yes, it’s about rainbows,” Boudreau said. “Look around. But it’s also about inclusivity. You should feel comfortable no matter who you are.”

Whether you’re talking about Black lives, Asian lives, transgender lives or gay lives, Boudreau told the crowd, they all matter. He added that, decades ago, the gay rights movement started out as a riot, “just like the Black lives movement has been doing for the last year.”

Randy Groop, an Emergency Department technician at Bristol Hospital, also spoke at the flag-raising on Wednesday and said, through the years, he has had to answer a lot of questions about Pride Month why the LGBTQ+ community “took over June.”

“We didn’t take over the month of June,” said Groop, who has worked for the hospital for about 30 years. “It’s still there on the calendar. You can still do things in the month of June. You don’t have to be gay.”

Groop noted that, in 40 years, he has seen amazing advancements in people understanding and accepting those in the LGBTQ+ community. However, he said, there is still sometimes a perception that this community is looking for special treatment because of things like pride events. This is a complete fallacy, he said, as it has always been about equal treatment.

“It’s always been an uphill battle,” Groop said.