If background checks are required for the Pride event, that condition should be met for all events.

By The Herald Editorial Board

Pride delayed may not be Pride denied, but controversy and fear have forced additional scrutiny of the return of what many considered a successful first LGBTQ+ Pride event last year in Arlington.

Organizers of a second such Pride event this year have now moved the celebration to July 22, about a month later than most such events in June, timed to coincide with the anniversary of Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, New York, on June 28, 1969, identified as a defining moment in the gay pride movement in the U.S. The rescheduling was necessary, organizers told The Herald’s Jordan Hansen, to allow planners more time to prepare and fundraise for event costs, including a $3,500 fee charged by the City of Arlington to provide police security.

Among Pride events last year in Snohomish County, the Arlington event drew an estimated 300 people and a handful of protesters to the city’s Legion Memorial Park, while a similar event at Freedom Park on Camano Island drew an estimated 800 people.

The acceptance of Pride events and the LGBTQ+ community, like many issues in American society of late, appears increasingly to have divided public opinion. In the United States, acceptance of homosexuality has risen to 72 percent of the population as of 2019, up from a bare majority of 51 percent in 2002, according to the Pew Research Center, and 64 percent of Americans, it found, said transgender people should be protected from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-pride-event-should-work-with-arlington-on-safety/