Mississippi city rejects request to hold LGBT pride parade

A city in Mississippi on Tuesday rejected a request to have an LGBT pride parade.

The Starkville Board of Aldermen voted 4-3 to deny the request after hearing 16 people speak in support of holding the event, the Starkville Daily News reported.

A group in the city, Starkville Pride, had filed a request to host a parade this year and to have city participation, according to the Daily News.

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The people who spoke out in support of holding the event included students from Mississippi State University, business owners in the city and university officials, the newspaper reported.

“We’re asking you to join us,” organizer of Starkville Pride and the pride parade Bailey McDaniel said during the meeting, according to the Daily News.

After the vote, she said she wished the city could have “been a part of this historic event for Starkville, but they’re not,” the news outlet reported.

“All I can say is that this isn’t the last they will hear from us specifically about this issue,” she said.

She said she plans to contact a number of other organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We will be taking action against this,” McDaniel said.”There was no means to deny our application. It was a perfectly fine application.”

Mississippi State Director of the Human Rights Campaign Rob Hill said in a statement that the city has shown it is not supportive of LGBTQ residents, adding that the community would “not forget.”

“It’s disappointing that the Starkville Board of Aldermen would deny LGBTQ people in Starkville the chance to celebrate Pride in their own city,” Hill said in the statement, according to the Daily News.