Pride Kel-So is being rescheduled to April after Southlake City Council unanimously denied the LGBTQ+ festival’s permit last Tuesday.
The festival’s original Oct. 3 date will now pivot into a block party at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church capped at 999 attendees as that will not require a city permit. Food trucks, vendors and local LGBTQ+ organizations will be on-site to fundraise for next year’s festival.
Event organizer April Dreyson said an exact spring date has not been determined but that the second Saturday of April is being considered. She and her wife, Shaina, are using the additional time to fight the city’s decision and “come back stronger — legally, financially and with a community that’s more fired up than ever.”
“This year’s (festival) theme is ‘No One Left Behind,’ so leaving would be a great disservice to the community,” April Dreyson said. “Pushing it to April allows us the time to work with the city, get community leaders and hopefully change that decision.”
Southlake Mayor Shawn McCaskill and council members Randy Robbins, Austin Reynolds, Gary Fawks, Frances Scharli, Chuck Taggart and Eric Wang did not respond to requests for comment.
Pride Kel-So was established last year on the border of Southlake and Keller to support LGBTQ+ families and youth in the northeast corner of Tarrant County. The inaugural festival drew roughly 1,600 visitors and featured live music and resource-focused vendors.
The Dreysons didn’t apply for an event permit last year since they expected less than 1,000 visitors, April said.
During last week’s meeting, Southlake council members did not ask Dreyson questions, nor explain the reasoning behind the vote, according to KERA News. The city’s planning and zoning commission recommended the permit’s approval in August.
The Dreysons have yet to receive explanations from Southlake officials, April said.
Pride Kel-So has lost sponsors since the permit denial, the Dreysons said in a news release, but event organizers are focused on replacing them and making the festival “bigger, safer and harder to ignore next time around.”
Last year, former Keller Mayor Armin Mizani told the Fort Worth Report that the event’s agenda is “aimed at exposing children to inappropriate, highly sexualized content.” Mizani is the Republican nominee for Texas House District 98, which spans a portion of northeast Tarrant County.
Before the inaugural festival, McCaskill responded to an X post that the event had received no support from the city of Southlake or its city council.
The Dreysons said they remain focused on being voices for LGBTQ+ youth, neighbors, parents and teachers in Southlake and Keller who are “watching what happens next and deciding whether to speak up or stay silent.”
“This is for them. This has always been for them,” they said in the release.
David Moreno is the arts and culture reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at david.moreno@fortworthreport.org.
The Fort Worth Report’s arts and culture coverage is supported in part by the Meta Alice Keith Bratten Foundation and the Virginia Hobbs Charitable Trust. At the Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
