Chicago on Wednesday announced that it
would postpone its annual LGBT Pride parade.
Coordinator Tim Frye told the Chicago
Tribune that the parade's June 28 date would be pushed back to
late summer or early fall due to the coronavirus pandemic gripping
the globe.
“I want everything to be safe for
anybody that's concerned with the parade, whether you're watching it,
whether you're in it, whether you're one of the people from the city
that helps to put it together,” Frye said.
“We just feel it would be better to
wait and do it later in the year,” he
added.
Chicago's annual parade draws a million
people and is considered the third-largest in the nation. Other
cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, had
previously announced that their parades would not take place in June.
Frye worked on the parade with his
husband, parade coordinator Richard Pfeiffer, who died of cancer in
October. Frye said that the decision to postpone was difficult in
part because he saw this year's march as a tribute to his late
husband. The couple was together for 48 years.
“I was hoping this would be a way we
could finish last year's parade, which was rained out (at the end).
We'll wait now and see what happens,” he said.
A two-day festival held a week before
the parade, Chicago Pride Fest, has also been postponed with a
tentative date set for Labor Day weekend, the paper reported.