Welcome to the Upstate Pride SC Blog!

Welcome to our new blog, Upstate Pride SC family!

As we all march forward during the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to offer our community more insight on how we’re all doing, whether it’s the Upstate Pride SC board of directors, our community committee members, and of course YOU, our LGBTQ family. 

To that end, we’ve started a blog that anyone in our family can submit to, allowing you all a forum to have your voices heard. Especially in the wake of the community’s action to overturn the anti-LGBTQ 1996 resolution in Greenville County, we recognize the value of ensuring our voices are genuinely listened to and considered. This blog is a place for our family to share experiences, advice, prose, poetry, thoughts, and more!

We of course want to ensure as many voices as possible are included, but we recognize that divisive voices in our community can and will work to break up our bonds. To that end, we’ve set out these guidelines to ensure no member of out community can be attacked:

General guidelines for Upstate Pride SC blog

  1. Blog titles are a must, and they must accurately tease what the post is about

    • You also need to include your name and a short bio

  2. Posts must be a minimum of 500 words

  3. Posts must focus on one topic or a small group of interrelated topics (i.e. intersectionality)

  4. Profanity must be kept to a minimum. Curse words used from quoted material is fine, but to a minimum still.

  5. All posts must be fact-checked by a member of the communications sub-committee and/or other board members, even if it’s not research-based.

    • On that note, research based articles must include links for them for us to check

    • If you quote another website, it must be linked

  6. Content that will NOT be accepted:

    • Trans-exclusionary posts (absolutely NOTHING from “LGB Alliance” folks, trans-hating lesbian groups, etc.)

    • Posts that promote or actively decry politicians (violates laws for our 501(c)3 standing)

    • Posts that denigrate others based on race, gender, sexual identity, age, level of ability

    • Posts that advocate for violence, domestic abuse, sexual misconduct, etc.

    • Posts that have serious grammatical and spelling errors that will require tutoring instead of touching up

    • Posts that are biphobic, panphobic, or acephobic are major exclusionary red flags

    • Anything that cites AfterEllen or other trans-exclusionary sources will be immediately killed

For transparency’s sake, we’ll go ahead and tell you who is responsible for ensuring your post meets these standards:

  • Matthew Lawrence, the communications director for Upstate Pride SC

  • Mattilyn, local nurse and member of the communications committee

  • Ansley, Upstate college student studying political science and public administration

  • Misti, local mom and graphic designer

  • Naomi, a non-profit and philanthropy consultant

Any questions on your content can always be directly addressed with Matthew by emailing matthew@upstatepridesc.org before and during the editorial process! We’ll be checking for punctuation, grammar, and of course to see if your content meets the above guidelines!

We hope to see your voices soon!

With Pride,

The Upstate Pride SC Board of Directors and Community Committee Members

Upstate Pride SC