HELP Center for LGBTQ+ Health has just announced that it is suspending the planned 2026 Arlington Pride event in the wake of the Arlington City Council’s vote on Tuesday, Dec. 9, to “defeat an ordinance that would have restored the city’s anti-discrimination chapter — protections that have now been suspended for more than three months,” according to a press release from HELP Center.
“We cannot in good conscience invite attendees to an event in a city that refuses to provide even the most basic protections,” said DeeJay Johannessen, HELP Center CEO. “Pride is about safety, celebration and community. Without the local anti-discrimination safeguards, we cannot guarantee those values for our attendees, performers or partners.”
The Arlington City Council — under pressure from the Trump administration which threatened to withhold federal funds from cities that don’t get on board with its nationwide war on DEI initiatives — voted earlier this year to temporarily suspend the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance. After several delays, the council this week rejected an alternative ordinance that supporters say would have kept the nondiscrimination protections in place while also protecting federal funding, instead voting to suspend the ordinance indefinitely.
“We cannot in good conscience invite attendees to an event in a city that refuses to provide even the most basic protections,”
DeeJay Johannessen, CEO, HELP Center for LGBTQ+ Health
“Despite months of work to present an ordinance that fully protected federal grant funding and reinstated safeguards for every Arlington resident, five council members — Bowie Hogg, Rebecca Boxall, Mauricio Galante, Raul Gonzales and Long Pham — voted against restoring those protections,” the press release notes. “Their vote leaves Arlington with no local protections against discrimination for LGBTQ+ people, women, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, veterans, or families with children.”
Stressing that the decision to suspend Arlington Pride was “not made lightly,” Johannessen continued, “We will continue to work with city leadership to restore civil rights protections for everyone. Once those protections are reinstated, we look forward to hosting what has become one of Arlington’s favorite events.”
HELP Center initiated Arlington Pride in 2021 at the HELP Center’s Arlington campus and has produced the event each June since then. In its second year, the event moved to the Levitt Pavillion in downtown Arlington where it stayed since. According to today’s press release, since its inception Arlington Pride has drawn more than 30,000 attendees, with some 70 percent of those people coming from outside the city. “The event has generated more than $8 million for the local economy, brough world-class performers from around the glove, was voted Best Pride in North Texas and became the largest event ever held at the Levitt Pavillion,” according to the HELP Center press release.
— Tammye Nash
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