This week, them. is highlighting and celebrating queer people, places, and stories from across an often-overlooked region: the Midwest. Look out for more from our Queer Midwest package throughout the week.
Five years ago, plans for a Pride walk in Chillicothe, Ohio, fell by the wayside when few people showed any interest in taking part. This coming July, however, the city of 22,000 will have not just a walk to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride, but a pool party and a dance party as well.
Chillicothe — home to 990 queer people if its LGBTQ+ population matches estimates of the national percentage — is one of a growing number of small towns throughout the Midwest where traveling to big-city Pride festivities is no longer the only option. As people become more comfortable living openly and authentically no matter where they call home, suburbs and small towns are increasingly hosting their own events.
A decade ago, Ohio had just five Pride events. In 2019, more than 20 took place, with 14 in communities of fewer than 100,000 people, from a beachfront parking lot in the Lake Erie town of Sandusky to a city park on the banks of the Ohio River in Portsmouth. Across the Midwest, about five dozen LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations have taken place in recent years, in communities like Mike Pence’s hometown of Columbus, Indiana; the Upper Peninsula town of Marquette, Michigan; the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove, Illinois; and the tiny Wisconsin town of Viroqua.
“We see smaller Prides cropping up everywhere. We see it in the United States. We see it around the world,” says Jonathan Balash, a regional director for InterPride, a global group of Pride organizers, and president of the annual festival in Spencer, Indiana, a town of about 2,300. “We all bring a different flavor to the movement.”
A 2019 study by the Movement Advancement Project, the Equality Federation and other groups estimated that between 2.9 million and 3.8 million LGBTQ Americans — 15 percent to 20 percent of the national LGBTQ+ community — live in rural areas. And while the report detailed challenges of small-town life, such as under-resourced support networks and less accepting social structures, it also found that LGBTQ+ people living in rural areas reported similar levels of satisfaction and well-being as their urban counterparts.
Daniel Mathuews, who revived efforts to celebrate Pride in Chillicothe, sees both conclusions of the report in his community. The therapist and father of three who identifies as pansexual enjoys life in a “countryish” area 12 minutes outside of town — “I like it here, I’m definitely not going anywhere” he says — yet knows plenty of queer people who feel unable to be their true selves.
“A lot of my clients are isolated within the rural communities they live in,” he says. “They don’t feel as safe to express themselves.”
In addition to the Pride events planned for summer, the First Capital Pride Coalition (Chillicothe was the original capital of Ohio) that Mathuews leads hosts monthly coffee and student game nights. LGBTQ+ people gathered for a Friendsgiving dinner in November and are planning a Valentine’s Day dance in February.
Mathuews hopes the activities his group has hosted can help LGBTQ+ people feel more connected to each other, and he hopes the visibility they bring will strengthen connections with the broader community as well.
“We’ve got some pretty wild things happening in our political environment right now,” he says. “But we all really want the same things in life.”
In Spencer, where Pride is in its 14th year now, the celebration draws more than 5,000 people — twice the local population — to the courthouse square. Although the president of the Polk County commissioners recently proposed new fees and rules in what Balash describes as an attempt to shut the event down, he says the celebration enjoys support from local businesses and other community leaders because of its positive impact on the local economy and people’s perceptions of the small town. Spencer now has an LGBTQ+ community center as well, which opened in 2016.
