“Out in Central Pennsylvania” marks Pride Month

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

Cropped shot of a couple holding hands and wave in front of a rainbow flag flying on the sidelines of a summer gay pride parade

Airdate: june 28, 2023

June is Pride Month when the LGBTQ plus community and other Americans remember their history in the fight for equality, justice and against discrimination. What began almost 54 years ago at a Greenwich Village Bar in New York called the Stonewall Tavern has led to a time when same sex couples can marry and have other have other legal protections and rights.

But there still is discrimination and hate.

Three years ago, William Burton and Barry Loveland, wrote the book — Out in Central Pennsylvania: The Story of an LGBTQ+ Community.

In June 2023, the book is WITF and Midtown Scholar Bookstore’s Pick of the Month.

Wednesday, The Spark reprised a conversation with Burton and Loveland in 2020.

Burton indicated that one of the inspirations for the book was that LGBTQ community had some support large cities, but not in rural areas,”In large urban areas, you’ve got some built in safe haven measures, you’ve got laws that you have in those areas. You’ve got laws that protect them. You’ve got neighborhoods. They generally have day neighborhoods, you’ve got social networks that are already formed, which then make it comfortable for gays and lesbians and transgender people to live and maneuver. And when I started looking when I started working with Barry, he was acquiring oral histories for the LGBT history project. And I read some of these oral histories. I was just kind of blown away by how the community came together because there weren’t any laws at that point in the early sixties and seventies that protected the LGBT community. There weren’t any gay neighborhoods. There weren’t any social networks or organizations. And through the course of time, they developed those networks and they developed those social networks, those activist organizations, and built their communities and found different mechanisms to cope with. It’s a part of history that hadn’t really been documented.”