Mini-Post: It Is Illegal But When Did That Stop Them?

For a very, very, long time there has been tremendous legal precedence... you cannot ban and event or protest because there will be opposition to it or it is controversial, you cannot charge them extra for protect to protect them!

Despite protests and threats, this rural community hosted its first Pride festival

WFYI

By Zak Cassel

August 18, 2025

A thousand people crowded Decatur’s Madison Street Plaza in late June for the town’s first Pride festival, defying weeks of opposition, online threats, and efforts to cancel the event. For organizers, it was a powerful show of support in a place where some feared they were alone.

But the success of the event was far from guaranteed.

A month earlier, Nikki Ausland and the board of the newly formed Decatur Pride nonprofit walked into a city council meeting. The room was packed — not just with neighbors, but with people from outside the northeast Indiana town of 10,000, many eager to speak out against the festival.

But then word got out about the Pride event and the opposition crawled out of the swamp.

A drag show planned for the event was particularly controversial. Residents and out-of-town pastors said they believed drag performances expose children to sex.

[...]

“It was hard to sit there and listen to what people had to say,” she said. “That we’re evil, that we’re pedophiles, that we’re groomers, that we’re abominations, that we’re un-Christian, we’re unholy — all of those things… That’s hard to hear. On a human level, it’s just hard to hear.”

This time, the town was caught in a legal predicament because they had already issued the permit...

At the meeting, the city attorney said that state law prevented officials from revoking the permit.

But next time?

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