Editorial: A celebration of Pride and the First Amendment

By The Herald Editorial Board

With the conclusion of Pride Month on Sunday, it’s obvious that efforts to allow the LGBTQ+ community some comfort and peace in living their lives as they are continues as a slow march of progress.

The modern Pride movement — which started with the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969 and notched a significant victory in the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that legalized the right to marry for same-sex couples — has in recent years become a more locally and personally focused campaign for acceptance — and not just tolerance — in one’s own skin and one’s own community.

Thus explains the importance of Pride celebrations in communities large and small that are now typical in June. It’s not been a smooth march in all communities, as evidence by the recent investigative article by Herald Reporter Jordan Hansen into the effort by some Arlington-area churches seeking to discourage the City of Arlington’s permitting of that community’s Pride celebration in 2023.

Delving into city records through a public records request and recordings of church sermons posted to church websites, Hansen’s account shows a behind-the-scenes “battle” against the celebration that included emails, letters and meetings among church leaders and public officials, many of which accused Pride organizers and the larger LGBTQ+ community of sexual deviancy. Specific approbation was focused on transgender people — often conflated with those who perform in drag — as demonic sinners who were sexualizing “little tiny children.”

Such fears, while frequently expressed by some, are unfounded. As are the accusations of “grooming” of children. An Associated Press report cites therapists and experts who noted that viewing “drag cannot ‘turn’ a child gay or transgender, although its playful use of gender may be reassuring to kids who are already questioning their identity.”

As well, there are myriad examples, including in Arlington, where actual grooming of youths by sexual predators has taken place in churches and by church leaders. Plank, meet mote.

In the end. the Arlington Pride celebration did go on last year — as it did this year, uneventfully — with city officials claiming that the pressure campaign did not ultimately discourage permitting of the event. What it did, however, was force enough uncertainty and missteps that event organizers had to put off the celebration until later that July. Among the initial decisions and reversals were attempts to require background checks of drag performers and payment of a $3,500 fee to cover security for the event.

The city later dropped the event fee, but initially declined the organizers’ request that it enforce a recent state law that authorized local government to restrict the open-carry of firearms at public gatherings. That decision by the city — ignoring the plain language of the new law — was reversed, but only after the state Attorney General’s office pressed the matter with city officials.

It’s also worth noting here that while the city was responsive on its face to The Herald’s public records request, much of the released material was initially redacted — entire pages, not just passages, blacked out — citing the city’s attorney-client privilege. While that privilege is recognized by state law, the spirit of the state’s Public Records Act encourages governments and public officials to be forthcoming with records and document that are generated for public purposes, here records related to the permits and conditions for a public event. A more transparent view into the conversations among officials and constituents would have been enlightening to the public and to other local governments who are navigating similar issues.

None of this is meant to imply that church leaders and members don’t have the right to raise concerns with local government officials regarding any issue, but those concerns must be weighed in kind with the concerns and wishes of all residents and constituents and the basic rights of all.

Seeing nothing in the planned Pride celebration unreasonable or different from any other group’s event, the permits for the 2023 event should have been issued without delay, as was the case with Arlington Pride’s event this month.

Examples of this tension between religious organizations and others in the community are certainly not over. Churches and religious individuals are — again, as is their right — becoming more active in political arenas, but with that rise in participation and expression comes the necessity to respect the boundaries placed by the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state.

There is no shortage of examples of threats to that First Amendment right; that “Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … .” One can dismiss the threat of Louisiana passing a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms or of an Oklahoma education official’s edict that every classroom have a Bible, from which history and English teachers will instruct. But the erosion of a foundational right holds as much potential harm for Christians as it holds for those of any religion; or no religion.

The expression of Pride each June can be celebrated by all who — protected by the First Amendment — can celebrate their rights to their faith, to their ability to speak, to assemble and petition their governments.