Texas state troopers now follow Democratic lawmakers’ every move to ensure they vote on redistricting. So one out lawmaker led police to a Dallas drag room.
Texas state Rep. Venton Jones, the Texas House Democratic Caucus whip and one of the few out lawmakers in the Lone Star State, met with fellow Democratic state Rep. Terry Meza at the Rose Room, a gay bar in Dallas’s Oak Lawn gayborhood, according to Chron.
The lawmakers were there to meet with the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, but their attendance meant dragging police escorts into the venue.
“We are always happy to have Reps. Meza and @VentonJonesTX at meetings of @StonewallDalCo!” Todd Hill, secretary of the Stonewall Democrats chapter, posted on X. “We also hosted Congresswoman @juliejohnsonTX and her Capitol Hill police officer. We appreciate everyone’s service and support of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The escorts were ordered after lawmakers left the state, denying a quorum to Republican legislative leaders for a time to thwart a mid-decade redistricting, an effort spearheaded by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to manipulate the makeup of the U.S. House ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
Jones was among those who left the state earlier this month. He has been outspoken against the maps. He has criticized the heavy-handed tactics used by Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows to make sure Texas Democrats don’t stall the political manipulation of boundaries any farther.
“So the Speaker of the Texas House has just elected to hold members hostage until, not flood relief is addressed, but until racist maps are voted on,” Jones posted on X last week. “Flood relief was never the mission. It was these maps. These maps can only be created by diluting the representation and voices of Black and Brown people. NOW law enforcement is continuing to be used against duly elected members force a vote.”
Hundreds of people marched along Washington Avenue on Sunday in a protest against Florida’s order to remove rainbow-painted crosswalks, a move critics say targets LGBTQ+ pride and local control.
The demonstration, called the “Forever Proud March,” was organized by Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez and the Greater Miami LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Marchers carried rainbow flags and signs, chanting, “This is what democracy looks like” and “Pride rights are human rights.”
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who was at the protest, said the state’s directive to strip away the crosswalks was arbitrary and harmful, arguing that the designs make intersections safer for pedestrians and serve as symbols of inclusion. She called the order “about erasing people’s identity” and said it undermines local authority.
Pope Leo XIV met Monday with one of the most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church and encouraged his ministry, just days before a planned Holy Year pilgrimage of LGBTQ Catholics to the Vatican.
The Rev. James Martin, a New York-based Jesuit author and editor, said Leo told him he intended to continue Pope Francis’ policy of LGBTQ acceptance in the church and encouraged him to keep up his advocacy.
“I heard the same message from Pope Leo that I heard from Pope Francis, which is the desire to welcome all people, including LGBTQ people,” Martin told The Associated Press after the audience. “It was wonderful. It was very consoling and very encouraging and frankly a lot of fun.”
Rev. James Martin shows a commemorative photograph of Pope Leo XIV, outside St. Peter’s Square in Rome, on Monday.Maria Selene Clemente / AP
The meeting, which lasted about a half-hour, was officially announced by the Vatican in a sign that Leo wanted it made public.
The audience was significant because it showed a strong sign of continuity with Francis, who more than any of Leo’s predecessors worked to make the Catholic Church a more welcoming place for LGBTQ Catholics. From his 2013 quip, “Who am I to judge?” about a purportedly gay priest, to his decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples, Francis distinguished himself with his message of welcome.
During his 12-year papacy from 2013 to 2025, Francis met on several occasions with Martin and named him an adviser in the Vatican’s communications department and a member of his big multi-year meeting on the future of the church. Still, Francis never changed church teaching saying homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”
Leo’s position on LGBTQ Catholics had been something of a question. Soon after he was elected in May, remarks surfaced from 2012 in which the future pope, then known as the Rev. Robert Prevost, criticized the “homosexual lifestyle” and the role of mass media in promoting acceptance of same-sex relationships that conflicted with Catholic doctrine.
When he became a cardinal in 2023, Catholic News Service asked Prevost if his views had changed. He acknowledged Francis’ call for a more inclusive church, saying Francis “made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress, or whatever.”
Prevost then underlined that doctrine had not changed.
“But we are looking to be more welcoming and more open and to say all people are welcome in the church,” he said.
Martin, who knew Prevost from their time working together in the synod on the church’s future, said he wasn’t worried about Leo’s views given Martin always had found him to be “a very open, welcoming, inclusive person.”
“But it’s wonderful to hear this continuation,” Martin said, adding that Leo told him his priorities are to work for peace and unity, citing in particular the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Myanmar.
“But he also wanted to remind people that this is a church for ‘todos, todos, totos,”‘ Martin said, quoting Francis’ famous line in Spanish about how the church is open to everyone, todos.
Martin helped found Outreach, a ministry promoting LGBTQ acceptance, which will participate in a big Holy Year pilgrimage Friday and Saturday sponsored by Italian LGBTQ Catholic group “Jonathan’s Tent.” Significantly, the pilgrimage of about 1,200 people includes a Mass at the Jesuit church in Rome celebrated by the second-highest member of the Italian bishop’s conference.
The pilgrimage is not officially sponsored by the Vatican, but is listed on the Vatican’s calendar of Holy Year events. Vatican officials say such a listing doesn’t signify endorsement, but is merely a logistical help to those groups that wish to organize pilgrimages and walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica.
But the pilgrimage and Martin’s audience nevertheless send a signal that is consistent with church teaching “that Jesus reaches out to people on the margins,” Martin said.
The message he received from Leo was “that if people were happy with Pope Francis’ approach to LGBTQ Catholics, they’re going to be happy with Pope Leo’s approach. And he asked me to continue what I’m doing, which was very encouraging,” Martin said.
The Florida Highway Patrol arrested three people on Sunday during a protest near the crosswalk outside of the former Pulse nightclub. The “Chalk For Pride” event was scheduled for 6 p.m. at South Orange Avenue and West Esther Street to protest the removal of “Pride crosswalks” and the “abuse of laws that threaten our freedom of expression,” according to a news release.
According to the FHP, 39-year-old Zane Aparicio , 25-year-old Mary Jane East and 26-year-old Donavon Short were arrested and taken to the Orange County jail.
On Friday night — Orestes Sebastian Suarez, 29 — was arrested after being accused of using chalk to color the bottom of his shoe before crossing the road, leaving footprints. Suarez faced a charge of defacing a traffic device ($1,000 or more) and was held overnight on a $5,000 bond until a judge on Saturday afternoon found no probable cause for the arrest and said that Suarez would be released.
The U.S. Education Department said Thursday that Denver Public Schools violated Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination in education by creating all-gender bathrooms and allowing students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
The finding followed an unprecedented probe of Denver’s East High School that marked a sharp departure from the department’s investigations under former Democratic President Joe Biden. It’s part of a push by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration against local and state policies that make allowances for transgender students.
The investigation in Denver began after the school district converted a girl’s restroom into an all-gender restroom while leaving another bathroom on the same floor exclusive to boys in January. The school district has said that was done as a result of a student-led process and the bathroom had 12-foot (3.6-meter) tall partitions for privacy and security.
The school district later added a second all-gender restroom on the same floor which it said was meant to address concerns of unfairness. At the time it said that students would also continue to have access to gender-specific restrooms and single-stall, all-gender bathrooms.
The Education Department said it offered the school district a chance to voluntarily make changes, including converting multi-stall, all-gender bathrooms back to ones designated by gender, within 10 days or risk unspecified enforcement action.
It also wants the district to use biology-based definitions for the words “male” and “female” in all policies and practices related to Title IX and to rescind any policies or guidance allowing students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
“Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of the department’s Office for Civil Rights, said in a news release.
Denver Public Schools officials said they had received the results of the investigation and were “determining our next steps.”
The Trump administration has launched about two dozen investigations of transgender policies in schools, including access to sports, locker rooms and bathrooms, according to data compiled by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news organization. Roughly half of the investigations focus at least in part on who gets to use bathrooms in some K-12 school districts in Virginia, Kansas, Washington state and Colorado.
Trump signed an executive order in February to block trans girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Supporters said the move restored fairness in athletic competitions, but opponents called it an attack on transgender youth.
Federal officials in June determined that California’s Department of Education violated civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams. Officials under Trump also have sued Maine over the participation of transgender athletes in girl’s sports and last month launched an investigation into Oregon’s Department of Education, following a complaint from a conservative group about transgender girls on girls sports teams.
Earlier this year, TikToker Kathryn Jones began a quest to visit every exhibit at the Smithsonian museums and read every plaque.Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty Images
Pausing next to a hulking steam locomotive at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on Friday, Kathryn Jones bent down to look at a tiny silk slipper.
“I’ve never seen one in person. It’s so small,” she said, pointing at the shoe once worn by a Chinese immigrant with bound feet. “That’s why I love museums. It takes those facts and solidifies it.”
The recording of a trail whistle hooted in the background, bringing to life the 1887 Jupiter steam engine that hauled fruit picked by immigrants in Watsonville, California.
“The immersion, the sounds, the small little touches that suck you in. I’m a sucker for small objects,” she said as she walked through “America on the Move,” her 100th Smithsonian exhibit this year.
In January, Jones began a quest to visit every exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, D.C., and read every plaque. During the past eight months, she has visited 100 exhibits at 13 museums, meticulously logging her time on detailed spreadsheets. According to her records, that’s 73 hours inside the museums and almost 51 total hours reading signs.
She traverses each exhibit twice, first reading every description and watching every video, then looking at the exhibit again and filming video for her TikTok account.
Kathryn Jones visits the “America on the Move” exhibit at the National Museum of American History Behring Center.Fiona Glisson / NBC News
“My goal for that is almost to kind of provide a marketing sizzle reel for the exhibit,” she said. “A priority of mine is getting people in museums, getting people curious, reminding people that learning is fun as well as hopefully right, breaking down the stigma that museums and galleries are stuffy and exclusive and people can’t come.”
Jones paused to take in historic footage of a streetcar passing the White House. “This is what I love to see, D.C. streets which I recognize,” she said. “Look how close to the White House they are with a streetcar.”
She added, “People on roller skates! I did not expect that. A tour! This is so cool.”
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 2019.Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP file
This year, Jones found herself at a professional crossroads after leaving her job as a vice president of marketing.
“I called it my grown-up gap year,” she said. “There were so many aspects of what I was doing that I loved, but I was just kind of burnt out and felt adrift. So, I took the year off with the intention to figure out what brought me joy in life, what I wanted to do.”
Making videos about the Smithsonian, she discovered a passion for content creation, which she intends to continue after filming her last Smithsonian exhibition.
“I tried, I think, three times and failed before I did my first exhibit. I went to a museum with the intention to read everything, and was either too anxious to do it, embarrassed to be filming in public,” she said. “I’m really proud of myself for the strides that I’ve made in my ability to focus, my confidence in myself.”
As Jones has built her channel, the Smithsonian has found itself under increased scrutiny. Last month, the Trump administration informed Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch that it would begin a systematic review to “remove divisive or partisan narratives” in advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” he wrote. “We are not going to allow this to happen.”
The first phase of the review will focus on eight Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Portrait Gallery.
In an interview with Fox News, Lindsey Halligan, one of the White House officials who signed the administration’s Aug. 12 letter to the Smithsonian, addressed the review.
“The fact that … our country was involved in slavery is awful — no one thinks otherwise,” she said. “But what I saw when I was going through the museums, personally, was an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”
A display featuring former slave Clara Brown at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
The Smithsonian Institution was in the administration’s crosshairs prior to last month’s review announcement. In March, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directed the institution to “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
In April, an exhibit by African LGBTQ artists was abruptly postponed by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. The following month, NBC News documented more than 30 artifacts that were removed from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And in July, artist Amy Sherald canceled an upcoming show at the National Portrait Gallery after she said curators expressed concerns about a painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty.
“It became clear during my exchanges with the gallery how quickly curatorial independence collapses when politics enters the room,” she wrote on MSNBC.com. “Museums are not stages for loyalty. They are civic laboratories. They are places where we wrestle with contradictions, encounter the unfamiliar and widen our circle of empathy. But only if they remain free.”
This is not the first time that the Smithsonian has found itself in the crossfire of a culture war. In 2010, the institution withdrew part of an exhibition called Hide/Seek featuring works by LGBTQ artists after sustained outcry by then-House Speaker John Boehner and Catholic organizations.
The institution was also roiled by a debate over a National Air and Space Museum exhibit of the Enola Gay aircraft, which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. Critics derided plans to include Japanese perspectives and information about the effects of nuclear warfare as an example of “politically correct curating.”
“The Smithsonian has faced crisis moments in the past … but the crisis moments have never come from a direct political assault, certainly not at the hands of the executive,” said Dr. Sam Redman, director of the public history program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “I know we use the word unprecedented a lot in this era, but this is truly unprecedented in terms of thinking about the Smithsonian.”
Kathryn Jones reads a plaque about Charlotte Hawkins Brown, an author, educator, and civil rights activist.Fiona Glisson / NBC News
Some museum scholars dispute the Trump administration’s claims that the Smithsonian overemphasizes narratives by Black and LGBTQ artists.
“We all know that museums are historically and culturally extremely conservative, and that there’s a striking lack of exhibitions devoted to women artists, or women’s history or Black artists or LGBTQ,” said Lisa Strong, director of the art and museum studies master’s program at Georgetown University. “Museums know this and have been working, working to fix this.”
A 2022 report by journalists Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns for Artnet found 14.9% of exhibits at 31 major U.S. museums, including the National Portrait Gallery, between 2008 and 2020 were of work by female-identifying artists, and 6.3 % were of work by Black American artists.
Jones said her priority on her TikTok channel is encouraging people to visit the Smithsonian museums and local museums that document history.
“Hearing those stories of people that have suffered before, problems that we face, that’s honestly why I kind of started doing this challenge,” she said. “Because when we read these stories and see things, the more we know, the better we can empathize with other people, because we have other experiences to pull from.”
She sat in the arched alcove of a railroad waiting room to listen to the story of Charlotte Hawkins Brown, who traveled to the Jim Crow South on racially segregated railroad cars during the 1920s.
“She talks about how someone said to her, ‘This is God’s country. You can’t sit there,’” Jones said.
“Hearing those stories, I do think it’s important to confront those things, because that led to where we are now,” she said. “People are affected by that. Some people will carry the scars of that.”
As part of a wider rollback on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (DEI), the Ivy League university will no longer designate residential proctors or tutors specifically for LGBTQ+ or first-generation/low-income undergraduates, according to the college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.
The tutors and proctors will have their tasks folded into “specialty” roles. The change was reportedly announced last week in an email from associate dean of students Lauren Brandt.
Proctors and tutors are live-in advisers who support and help plan activities for students in their first year at Harvard.
A document included with Brandt’s email informed students that “Culture and Community” proctors and tutors would now work to “foster cultivation of bonds and bridges to enable all members of our community to grow with and learn from each other”, The Crimson reported.
“The description of the responsibilities of the… tutors does not mention providing support to students with specific backgrounds or identities,” the report went on to say.
A 21-year-old trans woman, Ciara Watkin, has been found guilty of sexual assault after a court heard she did not tell the man she was dating that she was not assigned female at birth.
The BBC reports that Ciara Watkin told the man she was on her period to stop him finding out she had not yet had gender confirmation surgery. The court heard that she had identified as female and used the name Ciara since the age of 13.
Prosecutors argued that the man was unable to make “informed consent”, after he claimed he wouldn’t have had sexual contact with Watkin had he known she was trans.
When Watkin later revealed that information, the man filed a complaint with police telling officers had he known, he would not have met her as he did “not swing that way”.
The jury reached a guilty verdict after just one hour of deliberations following a two-day trial. She will be sentenced on 10 October and was ordered to sign the sex offenders register within three days.
Updated Crown Prosecution Service “deception as to sex” guidance
Ciara Watkin’s conviction comes in the wake of a recent update to the Crown Prosecution Service’s “deception as to sex”, previously “deception as to gender”, guidance.
The “deception as to gender” guidance initially arose following the case of McNally v R. [2013] EWCA Crim 1051 when the Court determined that “depending on the circumstances, deception as to gender can vitiate consent”.
In 2013, Justine McNally, 18, entered an online relationship with another young woman, using the name Scott McNally. When they met in person McNally continued to present as Scott and they engaged in sexual activity. She was convicted of six counts of assault by penetration.
Policy Exchange is a British think tank based in London described as “highly influential” by OpenDemocracy. However, the sources of its £3,951,594 annual funding are unclear. Policy Exchange was rated as “highly opaque” in a 2016 report, noting that it is one of only a “handful of think tanks that refuse to reveal even the identities of their donors.”
The CPS said that they received 409 responses to the 2022 consultation in total, including from “gender critical stakeholders, women’s rights groups and lesbian and gay persons.” They stated: “We have given careful consideration to all of the responses received and have made significant revisions to the final version of the guidance.”
The CPS subsequently changed the wording of the guidance to “deception as to sex” instead of “deception as to gender” and clarified that the guidance applies to suspects who are trans and non-binary.
In their summary of the changes, CPS also note: “We have clarified that there is no onus or responsibility on a complainant to confirm or discover the sex or gender identity of the suspect, and we have made extensive revisions to the factors to consider in relation to whether the complainant was deceived.”
The current presidential administration is slashing the lifesaving PEPFAR program for HIV relief, despite earlier public assurances to lawmakers and advocates that funding for the program was secure.
Funding will be cut by half for both this and next year’s federal budgets, before he shuts down the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) completely, according to members of the program’s staff as well as budget documents viewed by The New York Times.
PEPFAR has saved an estimated 26 million lives since it was introduced by President George W. Bush in 2003.
The massive cuts come after PEPFAR’s supporters were lulled into thinking that the program was secure. Last July, the White House relented and restored $400 million in cuts to the program.
That fight, in the face of bipartisan Senate opposition, was a distraction, according to staff members who work for PEPFAR, because they’ve been repeatedly told by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that the program would be receiving less than half of the $6 billion appropriated by Congress for the 2025 fiscal year — even after the $400 million was officially restored.
But even that money hasn’t been restored, according to a federal budget tracking website that was disappeared by the presidential administration in January and restored by court order just last week.
Failure by OMB Director Russell Vought to appropriate the money is a de facto spending cut, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who serves as vice chair of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee.
“Even after promising Republican lawmakers that the program would be protected, Russ Vought has choked off a huge chunk of funding provided by Congress for PEPFAR,” she said. “And he’s managed to hide this cut from lawmakers and the public until now because he took down a key spending transparency website.”
According to PEPFAR staff, they were told that the program would be given a maximum amount of $2.9 billion out of the original $6 billion commitment to the program. PEPFAR staff were told that they should make plans with implementing partners around the globe accordingly. Those staffers spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
Further dilution of PEPFAR’s mission, mandated by Congress to cover HIV prevention alone, is occurring alongside budgetary cutbacks for preventing other diseases worldwide. Funds are being cut for “Global Health security, Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Polio eradication and prevention,” according to an OMB document.
The massive funding cuts coincide with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s plan to shut PEPFAR down completely, cutting some countries off within just two years, and shuttering the entire program within eight.
Observers have said that the cuts will worsen HIV epidemics abroad, destabilizing African regions, and making them more susceptible to warlords and other national security risks.
Ottawa’s Pride parade ground to a halt on Sunday afternoon when Queers4Palestine protesters blocked the route and demanded to negotiate with parade organizers over their stance on the war in Gaza.
After nearly an hour of talks, and with the route still blocked, the two sides failed to reach an accommodation. Capital Pride, the event’s organizers, decided to cancel the remainder of the march.
“We are bummed, of course, but we had a blast for the block and a half that we walked,” said Stefania Wheelhouse, who marched in the short-lived parade with a local theater company.
“We sang, we spread the word,” she told the Ottawa Citizen. “Everyone was so positive, so it was still a net win for us,” Wheelhouse said.
The atmosphere was less positive for parade and protest leaders, who tried and failed to come to terms over Israel’s continuing occupation of Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, and Capital Pride’s response.
Last year, the group was resolute in its support of Palestinians, issuing a letter that condemned both the “acts of terrorism” committed on October 7 by Hamas and Israel’s “endless and brutal campaign in Gaza,” which the letter said had caused the deaths of “innocent Palestinians.”
The Jewish Federation of Ottawa called the 2024 statement “antisemitic” and vowed to boycott last summer’s Pride parade in response. Other groups, and Ottawa’s mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, withdrew their support and sponsorship as well.
This year, that statement quietly disappeared from Capital Pride’s website.
“This is what a village looks like!” the pro-Palestinian protesters chanted from Parliament Hill in the Canadian capital, a reference to this year’s “We Are a Village” parade theme. The parade ground to a halt there, Q4P said, with the ascent of Grand Marshall Patience Plush.
Protesters unfurled Palestinian flags and a giant pink-and-black banner that read “All of us or none of us” and “Stonewall was an intifada.” Many signs read, “No pride in genocide.”
Demonstrators also chanted slogans including “Free, free Palestine!” “Long live the intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
Queers4Palestine issued several demands of Capital Pride, including a commitment to join the long-running boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
They also demanded that Mayor Sutcliffe and other elected officials publicly apologize for the 2024 boycott of Capital Pride and called on them to “stand with us and all oppressed peoples, including Palestinians.”
“We are in the parade today to affirm very clearly that our Pride is not for sale, and that 2SLGBTQIA+ communities will not accept sponsors and elected officials dictating what we stand for, how we celebrate ourselves, and how we claim our space,” a press release from the group said.
“CP had multiple discussions with those who boycotted over the last year, not with Q4P and allies. Why prioritize corporations and right-wing politicians over the queer community?” the group asked.
“CP’s board voted to publish last year’s solidarity statement. This year’s removal was not voted on. One board member even quit in protest.
“Mayor Sutcliffe and others boycotted Pride last year, hurting our community financially. Now he wants to show up without apology — using Pride for political gain,” the group said.
Capital Pride can’t say it wasn’t aware of Q4P’s demands. Sunday’s stoppage came after at least a week of public calls to reinstate the statement.
But Capital Pride organizers slow-walked a response, as former sponsors and Ottawa’s mayor returned in the absence of the polarizing document.
Belatedly, the group said it stood by the views expressed in last year’s letter about Israel’s actions in Gaza, and said the statement was missing online due to a website “refresh,” reiterating Executive Director Callie Metler’s description of the removal as part of the organization’s annual process of “refreshing their online environment.”
By that time, the parade had launched and was aborted.
Capital Pride released a “Clarification on Parade cancellation” message to social media that said that Q4P was marching in the parade as “guests invited by the parade garnd marshall,” before the group forced the parade to stop.
“As a community organization, we strive to engage with our community members in good faith and to balance the various interests and demands that are made of us while also organizing one of the largest festivals in our city,” the statement said. “Throughout the summer, we had several meetings with Q4P along with other community groups to discuss the issues that are important to them.
“Unfortunately, the group refused to have a meaningful discussion about how to move forward. After over an hour of attempting to resolve the stoppage, it became clear that Q4P was unwilling to engage in a good faith conversation and was insistent on misrepresenting our discussions.”
“Rerouting the parade mid-way was not possible and the street closures for the parade route were only permitted to 4:00 pm. Given the constraints we were facing and the nature of the discussion with Q4P, we were left with no other choice than to cancel the remainder of the parade.”
The message said that other parts of Ottawa’s Pride festivities would continue as planned.
In a statement, Mayor Sutcliffe said it was “deeply regrettable that a group of activists chose to block the parade, ultimately leading Capital Pride officials to cancel the event.”
“My heart goes out to the many people in our city who were deprived of the opportunity to participate in this celebration of joy, resilience, and community.”
