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."
Last year, more than 500 festival-goers heard continuous live music from local artists, played volleyball and Frisbee on the beach, chatted with new friends and kayaked on the Chesapeake. Many lingered on a memorable late afternoon as the sun went down.
Yes, the festival also features that camp staple of Pride events, a drag show (this year, a popular local performer, Stormy Vain, will be one of six drag queens to entertain), but planners were and are adamant about staging the spectacle in a secluded area of the park so visitors can choose whether or not to view it.
Besides, next weekend, Vain will introduce a strangely appropriate old-fashioned twist. She'll preside over a bake sale during the other queens' performances.
"That's not something you think of when you think of drag shows," Hinken says with a laugh. "But it says a lot about the sort of event we're putting on."
Improvisation
As laid-back as the event can seem, Chesapeake Pride has been the culmination of years of hard work. Even in this comparatively tolerant age, it's not easy developing a new GLBT festival.
Even before the economy slowed, Hinken says, corporations that traditionally support Pride festivals — Southwest Airlines, Budweiser and Absolut Vodka among them — threw their dollars at the more-established fests that draw tens or even hundreds of thousands of visitors a year: New York's Pridefest, Capital Pride and Pride events in Pittsburgh and San Diego, to name a few.
Unlike many of its competitors, Chesapeake Pride is a nonprofit that operates solely on donations.
"We don't have the resources to put up a billboard along Route 50, let's put it that way," Petrosillo says. But in Anne Arundel and Southern Maryland, getting the word out can be tough.
"There are no [gay] bars per se where you can leave your card," says Hinken, a retired insurance-company employee who lives in Edgewater. So planners have had to improvise.
First, they've learned from the experts. Petrosillo and Hinkin have sat in on informational seminars held by the bigger festivals, picking experienced brains on subjects as wide-ranging as fund raising and choosing appropriate locations.
Chesapeake Pride has fared well on the latter score. "This is Anne Arundel County. Many of these folks grew up on the water and sailing," Hinken says. "Just as Baltimore people like the city, this is a place where people can be in a familiar environment, one they know."
Then there's the financial end. Schwandt has decreased his organizational role this year, but one lesson Hinken has learned could have come right from his bag of tricks.
"I've learned not to be afraid to ask a large company or big-time performer to be at your Pride," she says. "The big Prides weren't always big. We go up to companies we know are going to say no, but we're like an annoying little gnat. We ask again and again." This year, the fest won in-kind donations from the likes of Trader Joe's and Panera, support that will allow them to direct funds toward necessities such as security, insurance and drinking water for volunteers.
Finally, like many in the modern gay community, Chesapeake Pride — an independent educational nonprofit — has gone digital. It has built an e-mail listserv of 500 names and sends out periodic notices to members, inviting them to regular happy hour gatherings. And as of last week, the group's Facebook page boasted more than 700 "friends." Many have messaged that they'll be on hand next Saturday.
Growing expectations
Hinken, who had to stop working several years ago due to an illness, says organizing Chesapeake Pride has restored hope to her life.
In some ways, she says, the event affects visitors that way. She and other volunteers set up booths at Baltimore Pride and Capital Pride each year, and many who stop by seem delightedly surprised that a similar event even exists in Anne Arundel County.
"I live right down the street from [Mayo Beach Park]," one festival-goer told Petrosillo in Baltimore this year. "I walked my dog there as a kid. I'll be there."
And each summer, Hinken says she meets several people who tell her it's the first Pride event of their lives. Many are in their teens.
That touches her, because even in this comparatively more tolerant age, the "coming out" process can be awkward or traumatic, especially at a stage of life when acceptance by one's peers feels so important.
"They've waited for a place where they could be comfortable being who they are," she says. "If we can offer them that for one day out of the year, we've done our job."
The little festival that could is hardly a behemoth like Capital Pride, with its 250,000 annual visitors, but as organizers' expectations have grown, it has added a new dimension to life in and around Anne Arundel County.
To its founder, the growth is part of a process that should never end.
"You can come to Chesapeake Pride and have a great time at the party," Schwandt says, "but we want to connect with … more people who don't realize that a place of support and care and celebration truly exists. When the party's over, there's more work to be done."
If you go
What: Chesapeake Pride Festival
Where: Mayo Beach Park, 4150 Honeysuckle Drive, Edgewater
When: noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 7,
Admission: Open to the public, donations accepted at the gate
Information: chesapeakepridefestival.org