LGBTQ-affirming atheist group denied booth at St. John’s Pride Festival

Organizers cited vague concerns, despite Recovering from Religion's global support for queer communities

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The St. John's Pride Festival is currently underway in the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador and it’ll end on Sunday with a big parade, followed by a “Pride in the Park” celebration where local businesses and non-profits can set up booths to introduce themselves to the community.

(Image via Facebook)

Like so many other allies, the local chapter of the atheist group Recovering from Religion filled out all the necessary paperwork to have space at Pride in the Park. They received approval on June 2. But a month later, on July 2, RfR representative Blake Collett received an email from Pride organizers saying their acceptance had been rescinded because they “did not find a strong alignment with the focus of Pride in the Park.”

A portion of the email from the Pride organizers to Blake Collett

That seemed bizarre, given that the RfR’s members are overwhelmingly (if not universally) supportive of LGBTQ+ rights. These aren’t just casual supporters, either. These are people who lobby their elected representatives to pass equality-focused legislation, attend protests, and often have LGBTQ+ people in their families if they aren’t in that community themselves. Hell, one of the big reasons people leave organized religion is because of the open bigotry against LGBTQ+ people, so these two groups should be natural allies! How could the Pride festival organizers think there was anything but alignment from RfR?

RfR reached out to organizers to get some sort of explanation. Literally hours after that rejection email was received, one of RfR’s directors Steve Ghikadis wrote back to request to speak with the organizers directly in order to “clarify a few misconceptions about our organization and gain a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding our rejection from the event.”

There was no response. So on July 4, Ghikadis sent another message:

… It’s been a couple days and we haven’t heard back from you. We understand with the event coming up, things are pretty busy at this time.

We would appreciate a chance to have a discussion on our rejection to this event, and an opportunity to clear up some misconceptions.

If you can please send me a response in the next 2 business days, that would be most appreciated.

Update: The letter also added: “Without clarifying information for our board, we may have to take alternative steps to verify the validity of our exclusion.”

That apparently infuriated the organizers. They treated the request for a timely response as a threat, but they still refused to go into detail about why the atheist group couldn’t participate in their event, citing vague concerns instead:

As you acknowledged, we are in the final days of preparation for our festival, and our capacity is currently limited. While we are not available to meet before the event, we would be open to connecting afterward should you still wish to discuss the matter.

We were disappointed by the ultimatum presented in your most recent message. We value open dialogue, but we believe this approach is not in the spirit of constructive community engagement. That said, we are committed to transparency and fairness, and we are happy to provide clarification regarding our decision.

All applicants are reviewed through a standard process, which includes research, discussion, and a board vote. Our board minutes are publicly available for transparency.

In the case of Recovering from Religion, we had significant concerns regarding your content and engagement strategies. These included a lack of direct and affirming representation of 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals in your public materials, and messaging that some of our community members — particularly those from queer- and trans-led faith communities — found alienating and troubling.

Our decision reflects our responsibility to curate a space that is as safe, inclusive, and supportive as possible for our community.

We were disappointed by the tone and approach of your recent message, which included a time-sensitive demand and a suggestion of “alternative steps” to challenge our decision. As queer people representing vulnerable communities, and as a volunteer board organizing a major community event, we found this escalation — including the swift involvement of your national body — deeply concerning.

Unfortunately, this has reinforced some of our initial concerns about your organization’s tactics and approach to engagement.

No one is denying the need for a safe, inclusive space for a community that’s routinely marginalized. But RfR is the sort of group that understands those concerns and creates those kinds of spaces for LGBTQ+ people. What exactly wasn’t affirming in their public material? What messaging was alienating?

They wouldn’t say.

And the reason RfR asked for a quick response is because the event was happening soon. Giving organizers two days to explain their decision should not have been that huge of a burden, even for an event run by volunteers.

Finally, the idea that religious communities might be offended by anti-religious sentiments should hardly be a big deal at an event like this. If different progressive religious groups can come together to support the LGBTQ+ community, despite their theological differences, there’s no reason a non-religious group can’t be included in the mix.

If anything, a lot of LGBTQ+ people have been burned by their religious communities, and RfR helps them process that grief and frustration. They know damn well the enemies here aren’t progressive religious allies, but rather conservatives who use religion to guilt and shame and spread lies about these very communities and who want to use their power to enact cruel public policies. Most “interfaith” groups regularly include atheists at their events. Why can’t this one?

Days after that email, Dr. Darrel Ray, RfR’s board president, sent his own message to the organizers trying to allay their fears and lower the temperature. Looking over the correspondence, he explained, “I cannot but think some mistake has been made in the research of your team. We are about as LGBTQ allied as is humanly possible.”

We have several LGBTQ board members, several of our director level people are LGBTQ. We have over 500 volunteers worldwide with around 20% or more identifying as LGBTQ. We create hundreds of hours of content with around 25% being directly related to issues LGBTQ people face. Our resource library is full of curated help for LGBTQ people all over the world.

…

I don’t know how we could be any more supportive. Additionally, in our 16 years of existence, we have tabled at many Pride events, maybe as many as 100 over the last five years.. I personally have tabled at two Pride events this year. Just this year we have tabled at Pride events in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and all over the US. I count about 15 events this year alone — so far.

He added that they work with groups like The Trevor Project and often refer callers to their chatline to local LGBTQ resources. And at those Pride festivals, they politely engage with religious allies. (RfR doesn’t use “debate me, bro” tactics.) Their goal isn’t to make people leave religion; their goal is to help those who have already left it.

Ray wondered: Was there some kind of religious test to participate in the Pride event? Were explicitly non-religious groups not allowed to be there because they might offend those religious allies?

There had to be more to it, right?

He never heard back. The organizers also ignored my own request for further explanation. It seems like they want to privilege religious allies over secular groups that are arguably more closely aligned with the lived experiences of many attendees.

It’s short-sighted and ignorant. But as of now, Recovering From Religion will be absent from the St. John's Pride Festival on Sunday because the organizers decided it was better to kick out an explicitly non-theistic ally than allow them to be part of a larger welcoming community.

One bit of good news, though: Recovering from Religion will not allow this to be the end of the story. They’re planning to set up a table near the festival, though not technically on the premises, with a sign that says “We are not welcome here. Come talk to us.”

I hope people do just that.

Incidentally, one volunteer with RfR shared this story with Blake Collett, and I’m reprinting it here with his permission:

I left religion just five years ago, and it was only after that that I came to terms with my bisexuality. My religious upbringing had shamed and silenced that part of me for so long that I couldn’t even begin to explore it until I was outside of that environment. At the time of my deconstruction and coming out, I didn’t know about RfR—but I wish I had. I felt so alone, confused, and afraid, with no idea where to turn for support that wouldn’t judge me.

That’s a huge reason I chose to start volunteering with RfR. I want to be the support for others that I didn’t have. RfR never tries to convert people or push an agenda—we simply listen. We hold space for people to ask questions, unpack years of religious conditioning, and heal. And for many queer people, that healing includes reclaiming and embracing who they are after being told their identity is sinful or wrong.

It’s deeply saddening to hear that St. John’s Pride removed RfR based on a mischaracterization of our work. The idea that we lack affirming representation is simply untrue—I am that representation. I’m proud to stand with this organization because I know firsthand the life-changing support it offers.

I truly believe that people in Newfoundland—especially queer individuals navigating the intersection of identity and belief—would benefit tremendously from the compassionate, affirming resources RfR provides.

Update (10:52a): I received a call from one of the organizers of the St. John's Pride Festival after this article was published, and they said they were upset with the nature of this piece and therefore did not have any interest in engaging with me any further.

That’s their right, of course, but that still there’s still not explanation for why they’re shutting RfR out of the Pride in the Park event. Responsible organizers would have a better response than this, in my opinion.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Update 2 (11:16a): In an interview with VOCM this morning, St. John’s Pride Festival organizer Eddie St. Coeur explained the rationale for excluding Recovering from Religion this way:

The big thing here is… this group isn't part of our community. And at first, we had looked at it and we saw the application, we kind of did a really high level outreach to members in the community and said, you know, how do we feel about this?

And at first, at face value, people said this shouldn't be a problem. And then there were some concerns that got raised in the community about how... Again, just no connection to our local community. People weren't sure what their motive was.

There's always a concern that queer people are tokenized in these kinds of groups and these kinds of movements. So, purely just out of an abundance of caution, we had reached out to them and said, you know what, we looked into this deeper. We don't have an established relationship with you folks. And we said to them, we said, “Your representatives are more than welcome to attend and be part of Pride,” because as far as we understand… the person that's connected to them locally is a member of the queer community, just not in St. John's or the Avalon.

So we had said, you know, we still encourage a person to attend… to take in the festival and participate and kind of get some time in community, and, if we can, we'll talk about this in August and see what next year looks like.

And they did not like that response.

And there was a escalation protocol that got launched. City councilors were… contacted for comment on this, which, why, we don't understand. They got very aggressive, demanding to see our internal policies, and we were given timelines of when we had to respond, or things are being escalated.

And I can understand people being, being upset because Pride's a fun time, you want to be a part of it. But the… just the way that things have played out over the last couple of weeks since we have… informed them and just asking them to come and be in community is really interesting, and it really speaks to an entitlement to access to our community that some groups have. And it's something that we try and be really cognizant of and that we try and navigate as best we can, and we're never going to get it 100% right. And Recovering from Religion may be an apt group that should be at Pride.

But the big thing is that they're not a part of our community, and they don't have a connection to our community. But there is a sense of, there is this sense of entitlement that they should have access to our community. And the reality is that these are events that are put off by St. John's Pride. And first and foremost, we try and make sure that the community that we know are protected and that they're going to have a good time. Not to say that anything wouldn't have happened, but it's that missing connection piece.

So I think that if Recovering from Religion wants to participate in a future Pride, that there's just some work that has to happen between both organizations so that we know who they are, we know what... they're about, and then that could be future times.

But… I think if things keep going the way that they are, it's going to be hard for us to kind of build that relationship out.

[HOST: So the door isn't closed.]

No. And we told them that. We were very, very clear in our email correspondence to them… like, we encourage your members to attend… because they're queer members in Newfoundland and Labrador. And if they're looking to find community, that's what we offer up.

And we just told them we're in the middle of our festival… We can't dedicate time towards this, but we'd be willing to speak… after the festival. And then press releases started going out, and we were accused of only catering to faith groups, which… And that was the other thing, is anybody that's in queer organizing and Pride organizing, to be accused of making a requirement to participate is that you have to be a person of faith, that would not be a very full Pride Festival.

And I think it's indicative of how there's a little bit of a disconnect there between their organization and what it is that Prides do.

I would just point out that the group’s website had open registration for organizations that wanted a table at the Pride in the Park event. There was no prerequisite that you needed to have an established connection in the community, nor was there any evidence that queer people are “tokenized” by RfR. The group wanted “access” to the community the same way I would assume everyone tabling there does: They’re allies and they want to create connections with other allies.

This isn’t complicated. But the Pride organizers are going out of their way to try and rationalize a short-sighted and ultimately irresponsible decision. Someone make it make sense.

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