July 30, 2010|By Jonathan Pitts, The Baltimore Sun
When Wayne Schwandt, founding minister of Metropolitan Community Church of the Chesapeake in Annapolis, wanted to plan Anne Arundel County's first gay pride festival in 1999, he figured the best way to go public was to take out an ad in the paper.
Friends predicted homophobic resistance. "Oh, they'll never let you do that," they warned.
He politely ignored them. A local paper ran his announcement, and 50 people gathered for a day in the sun at Quiet Waters Park. "It felt like a church picnic," he says.
This week Schwandt and a team of volunteers are finalizing plans for the 11th Chesapeake Pride, an event expected to attract more than 700 people to Mayo Beach Park in Edgewater on Saturday, weather permitting.
Chesapeake Pride (planners jokingly call it Gay on the Bay) is now the second-biggest gay pride festival in Maryland, trailing only Baltimore Pride with its 30,000 annual visitors. It's also the only one in Anne Arundel County.
And if this year's is anything like the previous 10, it should have a low-key, family-friendly feel, unlike that of its much-bigger competitors.
"It's a local festival with a local flavor," says John Petrosillo, co-chair of the event's planning committee.
It hasn't been easy developing Chesapeake Pride in the shadow of its bigger neighbors in Charm City and Washington, D.C. Organizers call it a "little engine that could."
To Schwandt, the key step in making change is often the simple act of giving oneself permission to imagine it happening. "Sometimes we create our own oppression," he says. "It's all too easy to fight [living in] a closet that doesn't exist."
A full-fledged festival
Chesapeake Pride got its start, in a way, in 1998, when Schwandt, a Washington resident, started MCC of the Chesapeake, a small congregation of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.
Like the festival, that denomination — an international organization based on what it calls "the radical inclusiveness" of Christ — is open to everyone. But it's largely aimed at creating a safe gathering place for members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
"I'm here [in Annapolis] to celebrate all creation, all of the diversity that exists within human society, and to be a compassionate presence to people who are hurting," says Schwandt, 60, who is openly gay.
That first gathering, sponsored by several local organizations, was open to the public, but it was born as part of what Schwandt sees as his spiritual mission: encouraging members of the gay and lesbian community to become more visible amongst the general population, in part, "to help other people know they're not alone."
Even that first event was rife with issues the pastor sees holding the gay community back too often. Owing to park rules, "We couldn't have music, beer or wine. [The setting] felt very quiet and remote. There was an element of self-imposed isolation, almost homophobia, to it," he says.
His vision was of something bigger and more fully integrated with the wider community, though fellow organizers didn't always share that vision. Some saw surrounding Annapolis as too culturally conservative to be receptive. But over the years, word of the event got around, and in 2005, Schwandt spearheaded a change of venue to Historic London Town and Gardens.
That was when he realized he had a full-fledged community festival on his hands. The event drew about 400 people, more than enough to overwhelm the site.
"People had to park all over that neighborhood," says Kim Hinken, Petrosillo's co-chair. "We were already too big for their parking lot."
A year later, planners moved the event to the Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds in Crownsville, where it drew about 500 people in each of the next two years. But that site, with its almost total lack of shade, felt "unforgiving," Hinken says, especially on scorching August days.
"We wanted a place where people could feel comfortable in every sense of the word," she says.
The location presented itself last year when a cancellation occurred at Mayo Beach Park in Edgewater, a quiet spot where the South River meets the Chesapeake Bay amidst sand and shade.
"It felt just right," Hinken says. Organizers jumped to get the spot.
Kayaking and camp
The vast crowds and sometimes-outlandish behavior on display at the larger Pride events, including Baltimore Pride and Washington, D.C.'s Capital Pride, are not for everyone.
Petrosillo, a software engineer who lives in Arnold, says many people in Anne Arundel County and Southern Maryland, where gay establishments are fewer and farther between than in most urban areas, have long waited for a happening like Chesapeake Pride.
"Whether or not there are [Pride] events, [gay] people are here in the same percentages they are in Baltimore and D.C.," he says. "[This] gives them a place where they can be themselves and have fun and not feel judged."
