Christopher Street West, the West Hollywood nonprofit that produces the annual LA Pride Festival and Parade, today announced that it is bidding to host WorldPride in Los Angeles in 2025.
WorldPride was founded by the non-profit LGBTQ+ rights organization, InterPride, which meets annually in different cities around the world where its members select the host city for the next WorldPride event. The inaugural WorldPride was held in Rome in 2000 and other cities that have hosted the celebration include New York, Jerusalem, and Madrid. WorldPride takes place every two years and in 2021, representatives from 500 Pride organizations from around the world will attend the annual InterPride conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the winning city for 2025 will be announced.
If CSW wins the bid, the World Pride event will replace that year’s LA Pride. “If CSW wins the bid, WorldPride would replace LA Pride for that year and it would be throughout LA County,” said a spokesperson for CSW. “No specific sites yet, but West Hollywood would be an important part of the bid as it’s a city in Los Angeles.”
LA Pride will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2020. In an announcement of the bid, Estevan Montemayor, CSW board president, said “We are confident that the vibrant infrastructure of Los Angeles is the perfect host city to welcome the world for WorldPride 2025.”
“Given the transformation our city continues to undergo, as well as a perfect score of 100 on the HRC Equality Index, Los Angeles stands out as the ideal global destination to host WorldPride 2025,” said Don Skeoch, chief marketing officer of the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board. HRC is the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit group that advocates for LGBT rights.
CSW organized the world’s first permitted parade advocating for gay rights on June 28, 1970, as a response to and in commemoration of the Stonewall Rebellion on Christopher Street in New York City the year prior.
Bring it on! But considering World Pride was in New York this past year let’s not get our hopes up.
I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but this event is like a magnet for Politicians and people with corrupt ideas. I hope the event’s financial books are wide open, especially vendors getting preferential treatment.