50 Years of the Pride Picnic: Why Rochester celebrates Pride in July
When Bob Crystal was a Cornell University pre-med student, he traveled with other members of the Cornell Gay Liberation Front to participate in the first Pride event in New York City in 1970, a year after the Stonewall Riots.
The Stonewall Riots were six days of protests and clashes with law enforcement after the New York City Police unexpectedly raided the popular LGBT bar, the Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969. Stonewall was the catalyst event that many consider the jumpstart of the gay liberation movement, which is why Pride is commonly celebrated in June every year across the United States.
But in Rochester, Pride events don't start happening until July. People like Bob Crystal would attend Pride in New York City in June, and then come up to Rochester to participate in demonstrations, protests, and most famously, the Community Pride Picnic.
Anne Tischer, founder of Rainbow Seniors ROC, an advocacy group that serves LGBTQ+ seniors in Rochester, said that the picnic started as small backyard gatherings of around four dozen people, some from cities like Buffalo and Syracuse.
50 Years of LGBT community picnics in Rochester
When the Gay Liberation Front reached the University of Rochester, the campus became a haven for students and city residents alike, said Tischer.
"The campus became a huge social hub, and gay people from the town felt safe going on campus to these parties, but when it became more and more town oriented, the campus kicked them out," said Tischer, who alongside her wife, Bess Watts, has participated in LGBTQ+ activism for decades.
Before the picnic, folks started backyard gatherings, with popular gay bars like Jim's donating kegs of beer.
On Sunday, May 16, 1971, the first public local event happened, and, according to Tischer, it was the first time gay men and lesbian women were visible to the community.
"It was a time when protesters would conduct sit-ins, so the Rochester Gay Liberation Front organized a 300-plus person sit-in, calling it a 'gay-in' at Genesee Valley Park. 300 people attended, bringing their own food,” Tischer wrote in a five-page explainer of Rochester's Pride History.
Watts, a local LGBTQ+ and labor activist, said that many of the participants were still in the closet.
On July 16, 1972, the first yearly Gay Community Picnic took place, organized by Patty Evans, Karen Hagberg and Bob Crystal.
In the following decade, the picnic became a fundraiser for the Gay Alliance, received sponsorships from local bars and would be hosted by different community organizations and started including entertainment.
"In 1983, the attendance was 2,000 (people). By 1995, there were over 4,000 people at the Genesse Valley Park," said Tischer.
Tischer explained that on the 20th anniversary of Stonewall in 1989, a separate effort started the Pride Parade in Rochester as a protest against Big Pharma for the cost of life-saving HIV medications. Eventually, a Pride Festival was added after the Pride Parade, and Tischer said in some years it got combined with the picnic.
All was normal until 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizers to cancel all Pride events.
The Out Alliance, an umbrella organization that formed from the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Alliance of Genesee Valley and several lesbian organizations like Gay Radical Organization for Women, went under, said Watts.
Most of its resources, including The Empty Closet — a newsletter, later turned into a newspaper, that covered local, national and international information for the LGBTQ community — are still available through an online archive.
Pride, a beacon of tolerance in Rochester
For over 50 years, the city of Rochester has had a decent track record with members of the LGTQ community, said Crystal.
Crystal, who moved to Rochester in 1971, was a paper boy for The Empty Closet.
The Empty Closet was founded that same year by Bob Osborn and Larry Fine, students at the University of Rochester and co-founders of the Rochester Gay Liberation Front. The publication was one of the longest-running LGBTQ newspapers in the country, until its last issue in 2020, one year shy of its 50th anniversary.
For Crystal, hosting Pride in July is just part of the reason that Rochester's events are special.
The city's LGBT residents enriched Rochester in many ways, he said.
"You had to be there. Rochester was always unique. We had the oldest gay bars, more women bars than anywhere else in the state, and the city was strangely enough very liberal and tolerant,” said Crystal, who believes Rochester is a beacon for LGBTQ+.
Crystal said that although Rochester is more tolerant than other places, it doesn't mean queer folks never faced discrimination in the city.
As a young adult, he lost his job because he was interviewed as an openly gay man by a newspaper,Crystal said, and as a retired hospital chaplain for Strong Memorial Hospital and Rochester General Hospital, he faced a lot of discrimination within the Christian faith community for being openly gay. He is Episcopalian by faith, but he served at the hospitals without any religious endorsements.
Though he spent years organizing, marching and advocating for gay liberation in Rochester, Crystal said he knew that the victories they had could be at stake.
Growing fearful of what the future holds for LGBT rights
Although Pride events are associated with joy and celebration, this year is proving to be tougher for many who feel LGBTQ rights are at-risk.
On Friday, June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the Constitutional right to an abortion and leaving the decision to individual states. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion that the court should reconsider other rights, including access to contraception and gay marriage.
Watts and Tischer spent years working in activism together and separately on issues like marriage equality, domestic benefits and Don't Ask Don't Tell— a 1994 federal policy that prevented LGBTQ+ individuals from openly serving in the military. Tischer was actually one of six people arrested for handcuffing themselves to the White House fence in protest of Don't Ask Don't Tell.
More: Supreme Court abortion ruling rattles LGBTQ residents in NY, PA. They ask, what's next?
“I'm 65 and I thought we had won this war,” said Watts when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
Tischer agreed, adding that they "fought the LGBTQ battles, and here we are now, experiencing the tyranny of a minority. We're back to fighting things that we were fighting 50 years ago."
If you go
The 2022 Pride Picnic will take place from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, July 10, at Genesee Valley Park, according to Trillium Health's website. This year's picnic is hosted by Rainbow Seniors ROC. For more information go to Roc Pride Collective's Facebook page.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that only Anne Tischer was arrested at the White House protest in 2010.
Natalia Rodríguez Medina is a bilingual reporter covering the Puerto Rican and Latino population for the Democrat and Chronicle in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on Twitter at @nataliarodmed or email her at nrodriguezmedina@gannett.com. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Pride Picnic: Why does Rochester celebrate Pride in July?
