A colorful affair to celebrate Equality Community Center [Video]

“Don we now our gay apparel!”

That was the tagline on the invite for the Equality Community Center’s inaugural holiday party, dubbed The Rainbow Affair, Dec. 6 at Maine Studio Works in Portland. Dozens of corporate sponsors and more than 80 host committee members supported this colorful seven-hour event — a cocktail reception, auction and drag queen dance party — in support of the collaborative space in Portland’s Arts District for LGBTQ+ and allied social justice nonprofits.

“This is a celebration of the accomplishments of the Equality Community Center, of the actualization of a dream of many of our icons of our community to come together to create a space that is safe and welcoming for our community,” said board member Theo Greene, a sociology professor at Bowdoin College. “Most of all, it is a celebration of our community — of our power and our resilience.”

A decade ago, the center’s founders — Betsy Smith, Ed …