The recent arrest of four protesters at the Pride Parade and the response to it by Stonewall Columbus, its organizing group, have revealed deep fissures within the local LGBTQ community.

"It's seismic," said Lori Gum, who resigned as program and Pride Festival coordinator for Stonewall about a week after the June 17 protest. Gum said she left because of what she calls the group's "indifference to the pain" of their community's most vulnerable: transgender and LGBTQ people of color.

"It's a make-or-break moment," Gum said. She said she had invested much of her soul in her six years with Stonewall and departed with a "heavy heart."

Stonewall board members say they didn't want to rush to take sides without knowing what happened in that tense situation. That said, the group is taking a look at its mission and its message.

"Everything is being reviewed," board member Jay Coleman said Friday.

Since its founding in 1981, Stonewall has stood for equality, acceptance and basic human rights, Coleman said. But maybe it's time for the group, which now serves as an LGBTQ resource center and puts on the Pride Festival, to better define its mission and make sure people know what that mission is, he said.

Gum said she's offended that Stonewall Director Karla Rothan didn't make an "impactful and meaningful statement" immediately after the incident, and thinks she should resign. And Gum thinks the group's entire leadership team needs to be shaken up. So do at least 16 volunteers who have threatened to no longer help with Pride events unless changes are made.

Stonewall officials wouldn't say whether they're planning any big changes in the group's makeup.

It was important for Stonewall not to rush to judgment after the incident in the wake of recent terror attacks and hate crimes, said board member Joshua Snyder-Hill. After all, a gunman claiming allegiance to ISIS killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando just a week before last year's Pride Festival.

Gum confirmed that the group had received numerous threats and hateful, homophobic communications in the weeks leading up to this year's event that were passed on to the FBI. But she said that didn't preclude Stonewall from responding once it learned the protesters were members of the LGBTQ community with legitimate concerns.

Stonewall announced Friday that it will host a community conversation aimed at coming up with a plan to address people's concerns about racism and homophobia. The event will be held at 6:30 p.m. July 17 at the Columbus Health Department, 240 Parsons Ave., and will be open to the public. Officials hope people of color, those who were arrested, and others in the LGBTQ and larger community attend.

"Columbus is a great place to live because we are able to have the tough conversations," Coleman said.

On Sunday, Summit on 16th United Methodist Church also will host an event called Pride & Prejudice: A Community Conversation.

Valerie Bridgeman, a poet, peace activist and scholar, will speak during the worship service at 10:30 a.m. and moderate a conversation at noon, after lunch.

Summit on 16th's pastor, the Rev. Laura Young, is hopeful the recent "suffering will lead to hope."

Columbus is far from the only community where racial discontent and other social-justice issues have bubbled to the surface in the LGBTQ community recently. In early June, protesters with the No Justice No Pride group blocked the parade route in Washington, D.C.

The arrests and aftermath in Columbus and elsewhere across the country shine light on the marginalization, discrimination and even criminalization — or feelings thereof — of many black and brown queer and transgender people, advocates say.

Police say the four demonstrators arrested — Wriply Bennet, Kendall Denton, Ashley Braxton and Deandre Miles — were blocking the parade route and resisted being moved out of the way. The protesters, who couldn't be reached for comment, say they were protesting homophobia against LGBTQ people of color and the recent acquittal of the Minnesota police officer who killed Philando Castile, a black motorist, during a traffic stop in July 2016.

"We stood for humanity, peace and inclusion. We were met with violence," Miles posted on Facebook.

"This isn't the first time Columbus PD has done unnecessary violence on black and brown people of color," Ariana Steele, a spokeswoman for Black Queer & Intersectional Columbus, told a Columbus radio show. The group organized a protest outside the Franklin County Courthouse after the arrests.

Steele told WOSU Radio's "All Sides With Ann Fisher" show that the group wants the charges against those arrested to be dropped and a federal investigation into the Police Division's use of what she called "excessive force."

Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs, the city's first gay, female chief, said on the radio program that the division investigates any incident in which officers use force and will be reviewing, among other things, lots of video evidence.



"Police, as you said, have not always been on the right side of civil rights," Jacobs told Fisher. "But here in Columbus, I believe we've taken tremendous strides to protect the First Amendment and everyone's right to use it."

Steele and Jacobs did not return calls from The Dispatch for comment.

LGBTQ people of color also say their civil-rights concerns are often pushed aside for the priorities of well-to-do gay white males. The establishment's issues include gays serving openly in the military and more recently, marriage equality. The country's gay pride marches, LGBTQ advocates of color add, have become increasingly corporate celebrations with no hint of their resistance-movement beginnings.

"Stonewall didn't start with a Bud Light sponsorship, and there wouldn't be a Pride event if not for protest," said Troy Anthony Harris, a local-theater actor and community activist who says he's committed to "eradicating racism and empowering people."

It was transgender women of color who led the Stonewall riots in June 1969 in New York that set off the country's gay rights movement, Harris said. And without those riots, he said, and the countless black trans pioneers who have made significant impacts on equal rights throughout history, there wouldn't be a Stonewall Columbus.

How the LGBTQ and larger Columbus community now act will determine whether the arrests and their aftermath lead to reconciliation and positive change or if they become just another missed opportunity in the fight for greater equality, advocates say.

"I think anyone who is living in the United States today knows things are not OK," said Erin Upchurch, a social worker, college professor and diversity educator who is running for the Columbus school board. "I believe in Columbus and its people, and I believe we can do and be better," she said.