June is Pride Month for the LGBTQIA community, which means that parades, events and celebrations spring up in cities and boroughs all over. This year, Sewickley is joining in on the rainbow-hued fun with the very first Sewickley Pride.
Organizer Adrienne Dees saw other places in the region, such as Bellevue, planning their own localized Pride celebrations and took inspiration.
“It’s something that I started looking into back in 2024,” she said. “I just put a post on Facebook asking if that’s something anyone had ever attempted to do.”
From there, a small group of residents formed a Facebook Messenger group and began to work towards getting a Pride event together. With the help of Sewickley Methodist Church’s pastor, Hannah Loughman, Dees began the process of putting the event together in earnest this past April.
Loughman has been the pastor at the church for six years.
“Someone from the group reached out to us, knowing that we’re an inclusive congregation, and asked if we would be willing to sponsor and come along and help the event get off the ground. And I said, ‘Of course, we would love to.’”
Sewickley Pride will take place June 27 on a block of Thorn Street from noon to 4 p.m. It is a very family-friendly event, Dees said.
“That’s one of the things we all agreed on, that we wanted to make this for the queer kids in the area,” Dees said.
The alcohol-free afternoon will have multiple kids’ activities, face painting, a plant-potting activity, sand art, a late afternoon drag show and even a dunk tank for the drag performers. There will be more than 35 vendors, from resource partners such as the Pittsburgh Equality Center to crafters and artisans. That will include a collection of queer authors with their books, plus makers of candles, crocheted goods and other wares.
“We will have food trucks and a couple of non-alcoholic beverage options,” Dees said.
Dees has a child in the Quaker Valley School District, and she is well-acquainted with students and parents there. Though she said the district is supportive of its queer students, some of the LGBTQIA kids still do experience bullying.
“They shut it down immediately, so I know that those queer kids feel supported in school. But I wanted that support to extend outside of the school doors. I wanted them to see that Sewickley as a community supports them.”
While the upcoming Sewickley Pride event has received a lot of praise from the community, both Dees and Loghman said that there has certainly been pushback as well.
“This event is needed because of the comments that we’ve gotten on Facebook when we post about it, because of the letters that people have written to the church, just the awful things that people have said. It really reinforces that there’s a lot of work yet to be done, in this community and outside of it,” she said.
Sewickley United Methodist Church is a welcoming congregation for LGBTQIA worshippers, a fact of which Loughman is very proud — especially since many churches aren’t as affirming.
“I just want them to know that not all churches are like that, and that we value and love and want people to know that they are loved. We don’t want to perpetuate that harm.”
She added that they have many attendees who are part of the LGBTQIA community, partially because they advertise themselves as a welcoming church.
Dees agreed that the area can still be hit-or-miss when it comes to supporting LGBTQIA residents.
“When we first started getting set up and started looking into fundraising opportunities and sponsorship opportunities, I was really nervous. I spent the last couple of years decorating my Jeep for Pride Month and putting Pride flags all over it,” she said. “And I can’t tell you how many middle fingers I get driving around.”
The organizers have encountered plenty of surprise from people when they bring up the concept of a Pride celebration in Sewickley, but they have also successfully held fundraisers and seen a boost from local businesses and organizations. The Sewickley Public Library and the Sweetwater Center for the Arts are both participating in the Pride event, as well as a number of local vendors.
“The members of the community really came together,” Dees said. Local businesses, including Moonlit Burgers, have held fundraisers or offered goods for raffles. They also held a Drag Bingo fundraiser last Friday, to which they sold more than 100 tickets.
The organizers are helping to build momentum with this first event and continue to grow in the future with more participants, more sponsors and a larger footprint. “Right now, we’re just this one-block strip of street. Maybe eventually we’ll be two blocks,” Dees said.