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Earlier this summer, queer families from around the world gathered in Provincetown, Massachusetts for a week of Pride, learning, and joy. Billed as the largest annual gathering of LGBTQ+ families, Family Week brought visitors from 33 states, as well as Australia, Denmark, France, and Mexico, to P-town, the historic gay haunt on the northern tip of Cape Cod. Organized by Family Equality, a national advocacy organization, this year’s celebration marked the 30th anniversary of the mass convening.
“With over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced this year alone, our families need and deserve a place and space to come together, build connections, and share their experiences,” Family Equality VP of Communication and Marketing Tonya Agnew told Them over email. “Family Week in Provincetown gives families the opportunity to just be, to walk down the streets hand-in-hand without fear of dirty looks or hateful comments, and it’s that queer joy that will sustain us for the work ahead.”
Family Week got its start back in 1994, when organizers Tim Fisher and Scott Davenport took their children to Provincetown for a vacation. After meeting a number of other gay and lesbian parents at the beach, the couple invited about 15 families to their rented house for dinner. Three decades later, the event has grown from an evening to a week of programming with more than 600 families participating.
“The inspiration behind this rapidly expanding event was the same then as it is now: Community,” Agnew told Them. “Growing up in the 90s, many children of LGBTQ+ families didn’t live near, or know, other families like theirs. That very first dinner with more than a dozen families — and then, later, the week-long event with thousands of registered attendees — reminds us that we’re not alone.”
For Ithaca-based partners Trudy Pantalia and Sharon Costianes, this was their third time attending Family Week, a tradition they intend to continue. “What keeps us coming back is seeing our gender fluid child be completely at ease, and happy like they are in no other place,” they shared over email. “As parents, having our child truly be seen and celebrated is priceless.”
Both local advocates in their community, Pantalia and Costianes also noted “solid efforts toward inclusion” at this year’s Family Week, citing the option to attend for free.
“Provincetown can be expensive and challenging to travel to,” wrote Agnew. “To overcome this homogeneity, we’ve offered Family Week scholarships in previous years, changed pricing to ‘Pay-what-you-can,” and created guides and resources for navigating Provincetown on a budget.”
The importance of offering an inclusive environment has been heightened by a year of nonstop anti-LGBTQ+ political mobilization. “This moment in history feels like a constant battle. Every day we are aware that our existence, our insistence, on living and loving authentically, could be weaponized against us,” wrote Pantalia and Costianes. “To be in a place that felt safe, that didn’t just tolerate us, but celebrated us as a family, brought me to my knees.”
This year’s Family Week was especially poignant for attendee Sarita Bhatt, as she was joined by a childhood friend. “I’ve known one of the moms in that family my whole life. We grew up in an Indian immigrant community in New England and being LGBTQ+ was not an option (or so we thought),” she shared in an email. “Decades later, here we were celebrating our big gay families, our identities, being brown, being Indian, being proud moms to our children, being wives to our wives, joking in our ‘mother tongue’ (gujarati), laughing up and down Commercial Street, beaching, pooling, paneling, all of it.”
Bhatt continued, “There is a meaning and value to that experience that is difficult to put into words because it’s something I’ve never experienced before: an entire week to be unapologetically me with my family and chosen family.”
But the most memorable moment created by Family Week for the Santa Barbara-based consultant wouldn’t come until they returned home. “A week after FE, my 5-year-old was playing with another kid, who started bragging about his (straight) dad,” she told Them. “And my kid’s response was, ‘Oh yeah, well I have two moms!’… that was his brag. That was everything to me. Everything. That is why we will continue to return to Family Week.”
From pool parties, to resource-sharing sessions, to panel discussions, to drag performances, beach days, a Pride March, and youth programming facilitated by COLAGE, Family Week offered wide-ranging opportunities for connection, affirmation, education, and fun.
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