HILLCREST, SAN DIEGO - Hillcrest is historically home to the LGBTQ+ community of San Diego. Bars, restaurants and small businesses all throughout Hillcrest sport a rainbow flag in the windows and have their pride out on display.

San Diego Pride became a non-profit after 20 years of providing the community with a parade dedicated to celebrating the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York. Since becoming a non-profit in 1994, SD Pride serves the Hillcrest community, and the surrounding San Diego area, with a range of programs designed to celebrate and support the LGBTQ+ community.

The pandemic lockdown caused SD Pride to stop all in-person events and shift online. Youth programs like the Pride Youth Collective and SheFest, a festival celebrating all those who identify as “she”, were moved to Zoom.

According to Melanie Mijares, the Bilingual Community Outreach Coordinator at SD Pride, during the lockdown, some of the youth who attended these events expressed that they were stuck in homes that were not supportive of their LGBTQ+ identity. Upon hearing this, the online Pride Youth Power Hour was created to build safe spaces through listening to guest speakers and sharing experiences with each other.

The infamous Pride Parade that usually runs through Hillcrest and other neighborhoods of San Diego was moved to a streaming format that ran for eight hours in 2020. Volunteers with SD Pride were stationed along the route at bars and other places to give information about groups and phone lines equip to help with the isolation that comes with being in lockdown.

“We didn’t know what we were doing. We are building the airplane as we fly it,” Bob Leyh, the SD Pride Programs Manager, said.

The format of these events and festivals was made up as they went along based on the rates of COVID-19 cases.

As the height of the pandemic has passed, programs hosted by SD Pride are transitioning back to be in-person. The youth programs are held outside, and the Pride Parade is currently scheduled to be marched in-person in summer of 2022.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “sexual minority persons experience health disparities associated with sexual stigma and discrimination and have a high prevalence of several health conditions that have been associated with severe coronavirus disease.”

Because the LGBTQ+ community has a higher risk of severe cases of COVID-19, the social services that SD Pride, and other institutions in Hillcrest, provide are that much more important to this community.

The University Christian Church has been open and affirming since 1999 and sits in Hillcrest, the center for LGBTQ+ life in San Diego. This church is the first open and affirming congregation of its denomination in Southern California.

“We became a leader in the denomination in terms of that,” Rev. Dr. Caleb Lines, the leader of the University Christian Church, said.

As one of 1,500 churches in the U.S. to be open and affirming, the University Christian Church saw that the community around it wasn’t included in what went on inside. So, the church went through the open and affirming process to become more inclusive of where it resides.

Rev. Dr. Lines explained that the open and affirming process includes studying the bible and discussing it through an inclusive and open lense, including the LGBTQ+ community into the full life and leadership of the church and a vote by the congregation.

This took place after the church gates were shut during a Pride Parade in the 1990s. The minister at the time said that the doors should not be shut to the community outside of the church, Rev. Dr. Lines recalled.

The open and affirming environment has brought a community into the church that has not always been welcomed, Rev. Dr. Lines noted.

Sue Bourrillion and Provi Malvira have been attending the church for about 25 years collectively. They met at Sunday services at the University Christian Church and chose to get married there in January 2021.

“We decided to get married in the pandemic because it shows you what’s important. It’s a big part of it,” Malvira said.

The UCC held weddings and services at the church in-person for years before the pandemic. The UCC was started becoming more virtually accessible right before the pandemic as Rev. Dr. Lines was interested in expanding the message of his church to a broader audience online.

When San Diego went into lockdown in March 2020, the church services were moved fully online and other social events, like Beer and Hymns, no longer met in-person. The community aspect that UCC strives to create was challenged for some, but also happened to include a broader community.

“We have people now from all over the country. We had someone from Poland the other day watching service because we still continue to stream it to,” Malvira said.

According to Malvira and Bourrillion, this sense of community was crucial before and during the pandemic. Attending church service online brought a sense of normalcy to the time in lockdown. The virtual format allows this church to become more accessible to others not physically in the Hillcrest community.

The transition out of the pandemic looks bright to Leyh, Mijares, and Rev. Dr. Lines. Programs that serve the historically underrepresented LGBTQ+ community will be brought back to in-person formats slowly to further strengthen the Pride of Hillcrest.

COVID-19 changed the way things are done in this community, but all long University Avenue Pride flags still fly high, people are enjoying meals in restaurants and the Hillcrest sign stands tall for everyone to see.