SI LIVE – Robin Garber and Dr. Kathleen Cumiskey have been selected as the grand marshals of the sixth annual Staten Island LGBT Pride Parade & Festival, scheduled for June 5.

Ms. Garber and Dr. Cumiskey will lead the parade, which steps off at noon from Central Avenue between Slosson Terrace and Hyatt Street, through the streets of St. George. The festival will run from 1 to 5 p.m. in Tompkinsville Park, at the corner of Victory Boulevard and Bay Street. Food, music and entertainment, coupled with community resources, information tables and vendor tables, will be available throughout the day.

The grand marshals will be installed during the Staten Island Pride kickoff on May 22 at 7 p.m. in the Staten Island Museum, 75 Stuyvesant Pl. The fee is $3.

The event is sponsored by the Staten Island Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Center, an initiative of Community Health Action of Staten Island.

Ms. Garber and Dr. Cumiskey were married in Canada in 2006. They founded Bent Pages in Stapleton in 2008; it is currently the only LGBT bookstore in New York City. They are founding members of Staten Island Pride Events, an organization that holds LGBT events throughout the year.

Ms. Garber helped found the College of Staten Island’s LGBT Alliance in the early 1990s, was an educator for the Staten Island AIDS Task Force (now Community Health Action of Staten Island) and coordinator of GMHC’s Lesbian AIDS Project, before becoming a special education teacher in 2003.

Dr. Cumiskey earned her undergraduate degree in psychology at Rutgers University, where her honors thesis was on homophobia and its impact on social interaction. She was also active in establishing Queer CUNY. She holds a Ph.D. and is currently an assistant professor in the psychology department and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at CSI, where she is the faculty adviser to the College’s Gay/Straight Alliance.

For more information or to register to participate or to be a vendor, e-mail siprideparade@gmail.com or call 718-808-1360 or 718-808-1351. Or consult www.silgbtcenter.org.

Staten Island Advance Staff Writer. This story appeared first in the Staten Island Advance on May 15, 2010, and is reprinted here with permission.