Marshall, MO faces backlash as permit for road closure becomes battleground for Pride event

Screenshot of Marshall City Council meeting on July 16, 2024. Attendees are applauding a motion to eliminate a Pride event. // Screencap from City Government Livestream

This September, Marshall, Missouri will host the town’s first Pride Festival. Or at least it is still slated to do so. The discussion about what happens next has turned this town into the frontline of a culture war that many involved seem ill-equipped to handle, as hateful rhetoric has left Marshall’s LGBTQ+ population feeling under attack.

Community member Quill Jones is the organizer of the MO Rainbow Rights (MORR) Pride Fest.

Jones has been a resident of Marshall—a small town of 13,000, located an hour and a half east of Kansas City—for the past decade. While putting together the event has been a longtime vision for Jones, she felt as though the pieces fell into place this year.

At a City Council meeting on July 2, the permit to close to the street for the September 7 festival was narrowly approved in a 4-3 vote.

Festival planning moved along smoothly at first, but after the meeting, word quickly spread and backlash followed. Writing on the church’s behalf in a community Facebook group, the pastor of Gill Memorial Baptist urged residents to “stand against” the event. While responses were mixed, many commenters backed the organizer’s efforts.

The community page, with more than 15,000 members, now has a single publicly visible post to outsiders. The Gill Memorial Baptist Church has a July 11th call for Christians to join them in protesting the Pride event at Marshall City Council. Later, an addendum was inserted, stating, “We ask that the harassment of our youth that attend our church be stopped.”

But when the next City Council meeting rolled around on July 16, pastors and congregation members from several area churches lobbied together against the event, urging the council to reconsider. Many of the speakers from that evening voiced concerns about the message a pride fest would send to youth.

“I didn’t realize just how much of a bombshell I was walking into,” Jones says.

A packed room cheered for the first speaker on the topic, Rodney Haggett. The pastor of Calvery Baptist Church expressed concerns about the vendors not being family-friendly, claiming that when he attended a prior pride event, he saw children being sold sex toys.

“It’s a duty of the city council to maintain a form of community standards in our community,” Marshall Baptist Temple Pastor Claude Fields says. “Standards for St. Louis or Kansas City or Springfield are not necessarily the standards of Marshall.”

Travis Farr—Pastor of Nelson Baptist Church—urged city council members to change their minds and “repent.” He paralleled his past on “the wrong side of the law” with the council’s decision of voting for “something that is directly against the Biblical standard.”

One of many clips from this meeting is presented below:

According to the Missouri Highway Patrol Sex Offender Registry, Travis Lee Farr was convicted of statutory rape in 1996. The victim was 13.

The next Marshall City Council meeting is scheduled for Aug. 6.

Moving forward, Jones says she has many safety concerns for the event, especially without the funds to hire private security. Although Marshall is only 90 miles from Kansas City, it feels a world away for many LGBTQ+ citizens.

“It is so important that people understand what it is like to be queer in all areas,” Jones says. “There are so many nice, little bubbles that people live in in KC or on the West Coast. But, I’m fighting alone here. I’m the only organizer against all of the hate and threats, but I will not stop. They will never stop me.”

We asked the organizer what it’s like to be out in the small town, especially with the recent backlash. “It’s terrifying,” Jones says without hesitation.

The full Marshall City Council meeting and its debate is embedded below: