The dormant Christmas parade controversy reawakened in council chambers last week.
Before an overflow crowd at the April 13 meeting, the City Council heard the first reading of Ordinance 2023-14, regarding a new city event policy for parades and other large gatherings to reflect state and federal law.
“We wanted to make sure we provided everyone with an even and balanced playing field,” said City Manager Brian LaBorde, who presented the ordinance, which would evaluate all applications for gatherings of more than 500 people, using city right-of-way or hosting vendors, under new guidelines for health and safety, general welfare, economic prosperity and fiscal impacts on the city. “But at the end of the day, a policy is really needed because other than that, you have a free-for-all from right- ofways and there could be disorganization, and this allows for security … so everyone has a safe time.”
According to city documents, staff formulated the ordinance using outside legal counsel specializing in constitutional and religious land-use laws.
But some area Christians used the citizens communication portion of the meeting to push back, saying the guidelines were too vague and would be used to limit their constitutional right to free speech and expression of faith.
“This ordinance creates unconstitutional, unbridled discretion and it includes insurance requirements that go against state law,” said lawyer Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values, a Christian legal advocacy organization based in Austin. “It has a problematic history that we know goes back to the ban on Christians being in a Christmas parade. It is flawed. And it needs to be voted down.”
Late last year, Taylor found itself at the center of a national media storm when some religious leaders running the event and LGBTQ-plus rights advocates tussled over whether to allow drag queen performances in the annual Christmas parade, which resulted in two back-to-back parades, including the city’s “Very Merry Holiday Parade,” which included a float from Taylor Pride featuring individuals dressed in drag.
Since that time, the city has been attempting to implement guidelines that would spell out the rules regarding city cosponsorship of events..
At the meeting, Pamela Harper said Christians were being unfairly vilified and objected to the city changing the name of its parade from “Christmas” to “Holiday.”
“I would like to talk to all five of you (council members), but three of you especially that are Taylor Ducks,” said Pamela Harper.
“Tradition runs strong in this town. Remember Naomi Pasemann? Mama Duck? What would she say if she saw us now? That Christmas parade, with the name ‘Christmas Parade,’ has been that name since the 1800s.”
Angelica Salazar also objected to the city’s actions.
“We shouldn’t be pushing a Pride agenda,” Salazar said. “It is teetering against that fine line.”
But not everyone at the meeting was against the city’s new rules, nor its handling of the parade controversy.
“I think it’s a smart move,” said Alex Allrich. “I think it’s good to clean up the language for the city. I also want to commend the city for their response about the Christmas parade issue last year. I think it was the smartest and prudent action by simply trying to protect the city from any possible litigation from folks who felt they were being discriminated against.”
In this first reading, At-large Councilman Dwayne Ariola expressed his wish to extend a provision in the ordinance that states that to meet the requirements, “event must have been offered to the public for two previous years.”
“I would like to have more Taylor tradition and extend that for five years,” Ariola said.
He also expressed a wish to see a list of events for this year adopted by the city.
LaBorde responded that this was too soon.
“Once we have the nomenclature, we will do that,” LaBorde said. “But it’s putting the cart before the horse If you list events before a framework that we all agree upon.”
