Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
BURLINGTON — CrossFit Burlington held its fifth Pride Month workout June 28, a fundraiser for Outright Vermont open to all.
Outright is the only statewide organization focused on LGBTQ+ youth needs, introducing them and their families to a network of peers through programs like Friday Night Group for weekly conversations over dinner.
In 2022, the event yielded $400 in donations. Its renditions in 2024 and 2025 have since raised $10,000 each, thanks in large part to an anonymous match of the gym’s $5,000 goal.
“This year specifically is falling on the date of the Stonewall riots, which were in 1969. The workout is based around that date,” said CrossFit Burlington coach Lainey Rae.
The uprising, when police and protestors violently clashed over a raid at New York City’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, was a catalyst for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Arranged in columns on CrossFit Burlington’s rubber floor, pairs of athletes undertook 56 sit-ups, one for each year since Stonewall. A Pride-themed whiteboard outlined six rounds of the morning’s routine: six pull-ups, 28 medicine ball squats, a 190-meter run and nine burpees.
Workouts are typically capped at 16 people, but the gym made room for nearly 115 this June. Their tight squeeze mirrored calls for mutual support at a time when states have restricted transgender people’s access to health care and sports; polls show a large majority of LGBTQ+ people believe Trump administration policies toward them will be harmful; and survey research suggests a wider gap than in decades between Democrat and Republican support for same-sex marriage.
“When I was growing up here, there wasn’t this kind of stuff to go to. There’s been so much progress for the queer community, but it also feels like things are going so backwards in so many ways,” said Desmond Peeples, an attendee.
In January, CrossFit’s national organization altered its gender classification policy for the August CrossFit Games, requiring athletes to compete under the category “corresponding to their gender assigned at birth.”
The games will bring 60 people — 30 under a women’s category, 30 under a men’s category — to Albany, New York, for three days of races, both individually and in teams. Each year’s workout is unknown until the games commence and champions are considered “the fittest on Earth.”
Between 2019 and this January, CrossFit allowed transgender athletes to compete in the gender category with which they identify. The org’s citation of concerns for the “fairness and the integrity of the competition” coincided with increasing scrutiny of trans athletes in the U.S.
Under the new policy, suspecting athletes can privately challenge the eligibility of other competitors who may be asked to verify their gender assigned at birth.
But the org’s Burlington chapter is holding firm.
“This policy completely contradicts the values we hold dear,” the gym wrote in a Feb. 4 Instagram post. “Every individual deserves to feel seen, supported and empowered to show up as their authentic self.”
In response, the local chapter did not participate in this year’s CrossFit Open — a three-week remote competition — and instead held its own event to fundraise for The OUT Foundation, a nonprofit working to eliminate barriers LGBTQ+ people face in fitness.
“For the local gym to say — ‘We’re gonna do it differently here, and not only are we gonna do it differently but we are gonna visibly and proudly do it differently’ — goes a long way,” said Dana Kaplan, executive director of Outright of Vermont. “As somebody with my own lived experience of being trans in 2025, I’d say that that gym was the best thing that happened to me last year.”
Kaplan has been part of CrossFit Burlington for over a year and participated in the 2025 Pride workout alongside his 8- and 10-year-old kids.
“That’s been super important to me … an environment where people feel seen for who they are and they can be their authentic self as opposed to walking into a place or a gym where, I would say, typically you feel like you’re being judged,” said Molly Purvis, owner of CrossFit Burlington. “We just don’t do that here.”
New Duds, a print shop based in Colchester, donated about $1,500 of would-be profits from 209 custom shirts, hoodies and tank tops. Every “Strong & Proud” print purchased contributed to the fundraising goal, the shop said.
“Anything we can ever do to help Outright Vermont, we’re always on board,” said co-owner Torrey Valyou, who joined CrossFit Burlington almost two years ago.
Last year, Outright celebrated ownership of 146 acres in Benson and Orwell where another of its programs, Camp Outright, will reside starting in 2027. Camp Outright is the only camp in Vermont specifically for LGBTQ+ youth and one of just 12 in the country, according to Kaplan.
Now in its 14th year, Camp Outright welcomes 130 campers from across the country to its temporary Starksboro base from July 4-18. The new grounds hosted Outright’s first Queer Youth Prom this May, and the org is looking to match the $60,000 already donated to kickstart the camp’s inaugural summer.
Looming over Outright’s ambitions are at least $40.9 million of paused or cancelled federal funding to Vermont since February, according to Vermont Public. In a recent internal analysis, Outright determined that 20% of its $2.7 million budget is at risk of being cut. For Kaplan, it’s even more reason to stay course.
“There are enough people who have had their lives changed or in some cases saved by the type of programming that we provide, that I believe that we will be okay and that people will step up and have our backs if we have a funding deficit,” he said.
The money collected at June’s Pride workout will help brace Outright’s daily operations and make clear that the org, and its backers, won’t stop showing up for LGBTQ+ Vermonters.
“It’s kind of going the opposite trajectory of the rest of the country in this little space,” said Dylan McKenna, an attendee.