How this long-running LGBT Pride festival flourished in small-town Indiana

Stephanie Wang | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Indiana town celebrates LGBT community Spencer, a town of about 2,200 in rural southern Indiana, hosts a Pride festival that draws at least that many, on the first Saturday in June. (Robert Scheer/IndyStar)

SPENCER – Some 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis, down a stretch of highway filled with trucks, and then along a winding two-lane country road, tiny Spencer looks almost exactly like what you would expect from a Midwestern small town.

Almost.

A quarter buys you two hours on the downtown parking meters. Railroad tracks cut through the town square. At the heart of Spencer, a historic county courthouse with a copper dome pays homage to war heroes with memorials around the immaculate lawn.

And at one end of downtown, two towering rainbow flags stand outside a storefront.

This is the new home of Spencer Pride, a local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender nonprofit organization.

From the outside, many in the town of 2,217 seem unerringly polite, downplaying any clash between the LGBT community and conservative residents. People say a certain amount of “live and let live” allows everyone to stay in their corners.

Yet messages of opposition to the LGBT community are clear: snide remarks and smashed mailboxes, intimidation and bullying.

Still, it can be hard to hate or oppose someone you know, someone you talk to, someone you work with.

“Can’t be a stranger,” said Spencer Pride co-founder Judi Epp. “Everybody knows you. Approve or don’t approve, they see us as people.”

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Once smaller, quieter and more apprehensive about how it fit into the community, Spencer Pride has now carved out its place in town. Through volunteer work and downtown revitalization efforts, Spencer Pride is finding common ground even with those who disapprove of the LGBT community.

And Spencer Pride's presence is part of the town's rebirth: After more than a decade of advocating for LGBT people in rural Indiana, Spencer Pride opened a volunteer-run downtown storefront, selling locally made jewelry, soaps and other gifts while providing LGBT resources to the rural area.

Spencer Pride says it's the smallest community in the United States with an LGBT center.

And while several of Indiana's larger cities have Pride events — think Indy, Fort Wayne, Lafayette and Bloomington, to name a few — Spencer may be one of the smallest Hoosier communities to celebrate and support its LGBT residents, with its annual festival this weekend.

The message that Spencer Pride sends with its tall rainbow flags is twofold, aimed at both the LGBT community and the Spencer community at large:

We’re here.

In need of LGBT resources

Eleven years ago, back when marriage equality existed in one state, the founders of Spencer Pride gathered for their first festival.

They had wanted to raise LGBT awareness and support, particularly given high rates of suicide among LGBT youth, but were unsure how a parade or festival would go over in Spencer. They decided on a picnic, pooling their money to buy hamburgers and hot dogs to give away.

In a park on the edge of downtown Spencer, tucked up against the White River, the little picnic was public but not publicized. When people stumbled upon the event, Spencer Pride members told them who they were and what they were about.

Before this debut event, the LGBT group — not yet dubbed Spencer Pride — met quietly in members' homes. It announced its meetings but not the locations; you had to call to find out where the gatherings would be.

The apprehension stemmed from mixed reactions within the town. Epp, 68, remembered what she called her public coming-out after she retired and moved to Spencer in 2000.

Many in her secluded lake community knew she lived there with her wife, and the couple never encountered problems there. But when Epp volunteered at the local senior center to help people do their taxes, one woman would ask her every time: Are you married yet?

No, Epp would reply.

Well, I’m going to find you a good man, the woman would say.

OK, Epp would say, you do that.

Until one day Epp tired of playing along with the exchange and responded with the truth:

“I don’t know what I would do with a good man,” she told the woman, “because I’ve got a perfectly good woman at home.”

“Well, that’s just sick,” Epp remembered the woman saying.

Later, the woman came back to apologize.

As the years went on and acceptance grew, Spencer's fledgling LGBT organization decided it was important to be more open and more public. Being LGBT or being an ally no longer needed to be kept secret, especially in this rural area in need of LGBT resources and where people are often less familiar with LGBT people — and perhaps less accepting of them.

Pride became part of the name. And in 2006, the group launched the little picnic that would grow into an annual daylong festival.

The festival is now held in the courthouse square, right in the center of town — a move spurred not by a boon in support but by Mother Nature, who one year flooded the picnic out of the park.

It’s distinct from the colorful Indy Pride parade that focuses on vendors, live entertainment and family-friendly activities. Spencer Pride also features a popular drag show on the courthouse lawn.

One year, someone stood on the corner and read from the Bible. Another year, someone scattered nails in the street before the festival.

And once, Epp added, someone tried to book the lawn to keep them from using it.

“Are there still people out there who have a problem with it? I’ll be honest with you: Yes,” said Owen County tourism director Marilyn Jackson.

But each year, the festival has grown. And now, Jackson noted, it’s one of the biggest events in town.

Organizers say it’s expected to draw about 2,000 people, many from neighboring communities — almost doubling the size of the town.

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'Opened their hearts and their minds'

At Main Street Coffee, co-owner Josh Hogan described Spencer as a sleepy town that's just now waking up.

Nestled in leafy rolling hills, Spencer is the county seat of Owen County, fondly called "Sweet Owen." Several of its residents say they moved to Spencer from the Indianapolis area in search of a slower pace of life, somewhere more scenic to raise children or retire. Most folks work at Boston Scientific or Cook Medical, both medical device manufacturers.

The woman who owns the sweets shop on the corner says it’s the kind of place where people look out for each other and are quick to help those who need it.

Spencer has two supermarkets: one family-owned and a Wal-Mart. It boasts Indiana’s oldest state park, McCormick’s Creek State Park, and a restored 1920s single-screen movie theater, the Tivoli, where the ceiling is designed with the pattern of the stars on the theater’s original opening night.

In terms of politics, Owen County skews heavily Republican: Two out of every three votes in the last election for president went to Donald Trump.

As for how the community gets along, Donna Greene, owner of All About You salon, puts it simply: “I say they do what they do, and I do what I do, and it isn’t any of my business.”

She added: “I go to church. I’m a Christian. My daughter’s gay. We just do what we do.”

Next door to her business is the Dragonfly Gallery, where general manager Dylan Heaslet works. He discovered Spencer Pride when he was in high school, with “a target on my back” as an openly gay student and in search of a support system.

Heaslet said the town has evolved into a more welcoming place, in large part because of the involvement of Spencer Pride members in other aspects of the community.

It helps people learn that “we’re not some scary type of monster,” said Heaslet, 20, who also is on the board of Spencer Pride. “We’re humans, just like you.”

Through his work in the gift shop, Heaslet said he has gotten to know a lot of people — and they’ve gotten to know him. Even someone who used to tease him for being gay in high school recently reached out to apologize.

“This community has opened their hearts and their minds and accepted me as a person, not with any labels,” Heaslet said.

Here, small-town sensibilities can wind up working in favor of the LGBT community.

National politics might stir up a fuss, but people say they recognize and respect how involved and invested Spencer Pride is in improving the community.

“There’s a whole lot of people out there who never lift a finger,” said Hogan at Main Street Coffee.

Hogan said he does “not necessarily” agree with Spencer Pride’s cause, but “we all coexist pretty well.”

On a recent day, his son was painting artwork on the side of the coffee shop’s brick building. The family had found an old black-and-white postcard of the street corner that showed an owl painted on the same brick wall. So he recreated the image with a new owl with a bowler hat and espresso maker.

As part of the downtown revitalization, residents are seeking to redo sidewalks, renovate abandoned buildings and attract more businesses into town — like a second coffee shop across the street, a game store next door to Spencer Pride’s shop and hopes for a microbrewery to complement the local winery tasting room.

“We’re all in this together,” Hogan said.

It is by no means a perfect harmony, but it is a step.

There's something to be said about respecting differences instead of poking at them, Heaslet said, and staying away from talking about religion and politics, if that's what it takes to get along.

Even those who say they don’t support him being gay remain kind to him, Heaslet said — a kindness that he likes to return.

“You have to be kind to one another,” he said. “That’s how the world needs to be.”

Call IndyStar reporter Stephanie Wang at (317) 444-6184. Follow her on Twitter: @stephaniewang.

If you go

The 11th annual Spencer Pride Festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in downtown Spencer. Spencer Pride’s CommUnity Center is located at 46 E. Market St. For more information, go to spencerpride.org.