THE ROUTE

October 2025

Welcome to the October edition of The Route, your monthly update (oops, we missed a few; pilot planning had us busy, but we didn’t forget you!) from Rainbow Routes, filled with queer joy, global connection, and updates from our growing community.

Updates

Thanks to grassroots gifts and early sponsors, we’re now just shy of $25,000 raised! If you’ve been tracking our budget projections, you'll know that’s roughly half of an entire short-term program. This lets us subsidize 50% of the cost, cutting participation fees by half for every student in our first pilot.

Last week, our founder was in Palm Springs for the IGLTA Global Convention. Selected as one of five 2025 Fellowship recipients, she was able to share Rainbow Routes' work broadly and connect with potential sponsors who are investing in LGBTQ+ travel. She’s back with fresh ideas for program destinations, corporate partnerships, and student safety and belonging, already feeding into our upcoming pilots.

Internship partnerships and projects are taking shape for our Colorado-based hybrid pilot. Here are a few partners students will be working with:

• Lavender Hill: Denver’s emerging LGBTQ+ cultural district initiative, uplifting queer history, arts, and community space.

• Aurora Pride: The nonprofit behind Aurora, CO’s Pride festivities and year-round inclusion efforts for the local LGBTQ+ community.

• OUT FRONT Magazine: Colorado’s queer media outlet, founded in 1976, and one of the nation’s oldest continuously running, independently owned and operated LGBTQ+ publications.

If your organization would like to host a student or collaborate on a short project, let us know!

Queer History Spotlight: Halloween

Have you heard of “gay Christmas”? Halloween has long been a night of camp, creativity, and public joy in queer life. In mid-century Philadelphia, drag-led Halloween promenades on and around Locust Street drew large crowds and are still remembered by a cheeky nickname. And as early as 1935, Alfred Finnie was hosting famous Halloween balls on Chicago’s South Side.

Through the 1960s, many U.S. cities enforced “cross-dressing” ordinances that policed gender expression, and courts didn’t begin rolling them back in a sustained way until the mid-1980s. On Halloween, those rules loosened, creating a brief window when diverse gender expressions were less surveilled, more visible, and a little safer. Historians often describe this as a “carnivalesque” moment, when everyday rules relax and public celebration makes room for expression that is usually restricted.

Today, the spirit is global, from Berlin’s SchwuZ Halloween Ball to parties across Tokyo’s Ni-chōme, Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ Horrorween, West Hollywood’s Halloween Carnaval, and Toronto’s Halloween on Church. Wherever you are, we hope you have a very happy Halloween!

Sparking Queer Joy: News & Resources

With what can feel like a constant flow of bad news these days, we’re making space to celebrate moments of joy alongside resources for our community:

• IGLTA’s Trans and Gender Diverse Travel Guide: Practical, affirming tips for planning safe, joyful trips, from packing to border crossings.

• We met some fantastic LGBTQ+ travel influencers at IGLTA and can’t stop scrolling their content: @explorewithchase, @janineandgen, @thelesbianpassport.

• Queer Roots Across the African Continent: Learn about a growing recognition of diverse pre-colonial histories and see how this understanding is shaping today's conversations about LGBTQ+ life and history in many different parts of Africa.

• UK Memorial to LGBT Veterans: A hopeful moment of public recognition, unveiled by King Charles last week.

Thanks for being on this journey with us!

Until next month,

Lizzy (Founder & CEO)