Ben Rappaport, Chatham News + Record
It’s one thing to talk about the issues facing a marginalized group of people, it’s another to celebrate and uplift them in a joyous festival.
That celebration is the aim of PBO Pride, the first annual Pride festival in Chatham County. The new organization, founded this year, “strives to offer a safe and inclusive community for all people to be their authentic selves regardless of sexuality, sex, gender identity, or gender expression.”
Pride month, which is honored every June, represents support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and other sexualities and gender identities (LGBTQ+). The month represents solidarity, collectivity and identity as well as resistance to discrimination and violence against the queer community.
The local festival, which will be held from noon to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 11, at The Plant in Pittsboro, aims to embody the mission of the organization with the tagline “Celebrate belonging.
Celebrate you.” It will feature dozens of local vendors, artists, performers and more. The event also aims to be family-friendly with events and performances for children throughout the day. A
full schedule of the day can be found at www.pbopridenc.org.
Brent Levy, pastor at The Local Church in Chapel Hill, is one of the organizers of the event. He said PBO Pride is long overdue for a community as rich and diverse as Pittsboro and Chatham County.
“It doesn’t make sense for us to not have [Pride] festival here,” Levy said.
He said he views his role in the event as “getting the ball going and getting out of the way.” Levy does not identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but considers himself a strong ally. The celebration, he says, should center LGBTQ+ voices and ideas rather than those outside the community.
In its inaugural year, the group bootstrapped the event together with a slew of donations, volunteers and local support. Levy said PBO Pride hopes to become an annual tradition, and eventually an official 501c3 non-profit to uplift the local LGBTQ+ community throughout the year, not just during Pride Month.
Supporting the local LGBTQ+ community is especially important this year, he said, because of outside factors causing unnecessary trauma and fear, particularly for queer youth.
According to the most recent Chatham County Community Assessment, more than 2,500 people in Chatham County identify as LGBTQ+. According to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit supporting mental health for LGBTQ+ youth, 71% of LGBTQ youth surveyed had experienced discrimination due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, 71% reported the primary symptoms of depression, and two out of three reported that someone tried to convince them to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. Rates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts were much higher in transgender and non-binary youth.
The Community Assessment also revealed that compared to their heterosexual peers, Chatham high schoolers who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual were nearly three times as likely to have ever been physically forced to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to. Chatham’s LGBTQ+ youth were also more than three times as likely to have experienced sexual violence, physical dating violence, and sexual dating violence at least once in the last year; nearly 2.5 times as likely to experience the primary symptoms of depression; nearly three times as likely to attempt suicide, and nearly four times as likely to consider attempting suicide.
“Living life in that fear, with your guard up, asking ‘Am I safe here?’ … I can’t imagine going through life like that,” Levy said. “So it was important to create a space, at least for a little while, our LGBTQ+ siblings can just be who they are freely, fully and with abandon.”
PBO Pride aims to be welcoming and affirming. As a pastor, Levy said he often sees a gap between those two ideas. People are welcomed in many spaces, but not always affirmed for who they truly are due to their identity, he said.
“There are numerous instances of violence and bigotry in our world every day,” Levy said. “Often silence is complicity, so we want to make a statement here in Pittsboro that this community matters.”
He said celebrating Pride is an act of love and generosity that stretches beyond a one-day celebration. Tami Schwerin, co-founder of The Plant, echoed that sentiment. She said she expects the energy of the event to create a ripple effect.
“I can just tell there’s a fire in the group, and they’re already thinking about what’s next,” Schwerin said.
The planning committee of about 20 people for PBO Pride has already begun making a list of ideas for next year’s celebration. Schwerin said the support for PBO Pride was inspiring to her because as the community grows — with economic opportunity, population booms and housing developments — it will need to decide what kind of place it wants to be.
“We all want to create a community that is all about love,” Schwerin said. “This event is about freedom to be who you are, and healing from the traumas that have been done.”
Chatham County has made some progress toward helping queer youth. In late 2021, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners adopted an LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance, which prohibits discrimination in public spaces. Ordinances like these, however, are the floor, Levy said.
Pride is about more than helping people not suffer, he added, it’s about uplifting, celebrating and creating queer joy.
“An event like this is just people organically here for a single reason: to celebrate our LGBTQ+ community,” Levy said.
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