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How do you pull off a gay pride celebration in a small Southern city where wearing an "offensive" **-shirt is illegal, the mayor tells "gay garbage" to stay away, and the local real estate magnate threatens "repercussions" to any business that trucks with sodomites?

Carefully- and to judge by the pride celebration this year in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina- evidently successfully.

South Carolina's ninth annual Gay and Lesbian Pride March and Festival, held April 30 through May 3, took place for the first time in Myrtle Beach. While the festival didn't draw the predicted numbers- 8,000 instead of an anticipated 30,000- the intense four-day affair attracted more media attention than any earlier South Carolina pride event.

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Thanks for the festival's notoriety goes in part to Myrtle Beach mayor Mark McBride. He vowed last fall that organizers would not find his city a welcoming spot for their "gay garbage." Burroughs and Chapin, the region's biggest landlord and developer, also threw its weight around. The company sent a memo to its business tenants warning that there "would be repercussions" if they supported gay pride festivities.

But to the mayor's surprise, the city council unanimously opposed him. Councilors allowed, over mayoral objections, blocking off several downtown streets to create space for the rally.

On Saturday morning, the festival's opening day, council member Judy Rodman welcomed thousands of participants, who had rolled out of bed after an all-night dance party. "As I was driving over this morning, I passed by a Catholic church and a Jewish synagogue," Roman said in her paen to diversity. "I thought of the African-Americans in our community as well. I thought how proud Myrtle Beach is of its people- and those people include its gay and lesbian citizens and visitors."

"By the way," Rodman added, "the city council ordered this beautiful weather just for you."

Burroughs and Chapin couldn't change the weather. But Myrtle Beach's gay pride events did move the real estate firm to rewrite its official slogan. "Boldly shaping the future with pride" has now become "Family values since 1895." According to a company spokesman, "Too many of those other people are using the word, 'pride.'"