Open Letter to San Diego Pride's Shocking Abdication of Pride

By Melanie Nathan, July 25, 2025

To the Board and Staff of San Diego Pride,

At a moment when leadership, courage, and accountability are needed most, your silence and invisibility are deeply troubling.

It is unacceptable that in a city like San Diego — a place of relative safety and freedom for LGBTQI+ people — the Board and staff of a major Pride organization would choose to remain anonymous on your own platform. In regions like Uganda, where LGBTQI+ people are facing the horrifying realities of the “Kill the Gays” law, or in refugee camps like Kakuma in Kenya, anonymity is a matter of life or death. But here, in California, your decision to hide behind a wall of invisibility undermines the very mission of Pride.

Pride was built on visibility, resistance, and solidarity. If those entrusted with leading our community are unwilling to publicly stand for those values, then what message does that send — not only to your supporters, but to those around the world who risk everything just to live freely?

A Board exists to uphold its mission, to represent its community, and to act with integrity. Disappearing yourselves from public view models fear, not pride. It models silence, not advocacy. It models shame — and that is the antithesis of what Pride stands for.

We are especially concerned about this in the wake of decisions made around this year’s Pride programming. Jewish members of the LGBTQI+ Jewish community were excluded — particularly in response to your decision to platform Kehlani, an artist whose recent work includes explicit calls to “Long Live the Intifada,” a phrase experienced by many of us as a violent and deeply antisemitic rallying cry.

While Jewish queer voices were sidelined, an artist promoting imagery associated with our community’s harm was elevated. That pain cannot be dismissed. That choice demands an honest reckoning — and it requires visible leadership willing to engage.

To call for safety from those who you should be resisting, while ignoring the safety of others is not equity — it is hypocrisy. And to lead an organization rooted in justice while failing to acknowledge the impact of your decisions on a vulnerable part of your community is a profound abdication of responsibility.

We call on you — not to defend or deflect — but to show up. To stand publicly for the values of inclusion, solidarity, and mutual accountability. We urge you to:

1. Make your Board and staff publicly identifiable — as other Pride organizations across the country do.

2. Acknowledge the exclusion experienced by LGBTQI+ Jewish community members this year and commit to meaningful dialogue.

3. Offer an apology and engage in restorative and educational programming moving forward, to begin the work of rebuilding trust and living up to your mission.
   

If Pride means anything, it must mean all of us. This is not just a call for transparency — it is a call to return to the core values that make Pride possible in the first place. Melanie Nathan On behalf of African Human Rights Coalition