San Diego LGBT Pride amended its policy regarding youth at this year’s Pride celebration after a special board meeting on June 14.

According to San Diego LGBT Pride executive director Ron deHarte, youth will not have to be accompanied by an adult or guardian in order to enter the festival and will no longer have to be assigned to a buddy/guardian within the festival grounds. In addition, no oaths or waivers will need to be signed by any individual entering the festival and youth will be allowed in for free if they show a valid ID and attend a special orientation.

Pride has added four levels of oversight to the festival regarding youth, deHarte said. Youth will now have the opportunity to participate in an orientation in order to receive a free ticket to enter the festival grounds, he said.

A “Youth Welcome Tent” will exist inside the festival where youth will receive goodie bags, learn where the first aid and security station is located, and be given information cards listed with booth locations of organizations that will provide resources for youth within the festival. These booth locations are preliminarily called “safe zones,” deHarte said.

“They’ll be told that if you ever feel uncomfortable, you ever have questions [or] you just want to get away, you can know that you can go to any one of these safe places within the festival grounds, and that will be on a card that they’re given,” he said.

The National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC) will provide complimentary copies of their “Youth Connections” resource in the Youth Welcome Tent.

“I am very proud of the ways young people in San Diego have helped to shape this new policy. It hasn’t been easy, but real change never is,” said Craig Bowman, NYAC’s executive director.

Youth will also be encouraged to stay together in a buddy system and respect Pride’s zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol, deHarte said. In addition, youth will be informed that PFLAG members will be available as official chaperones and will be positioned throughout the festival grounds.

deHarte said he called the Wednesday special board meeting in executive session instead of as an open public meeting because the issue and discussion that took place was something that could possibly put Pride at risk, impacting their liability.

deHarte first announced in a Gay & Lesbian Times commentary on April 20 that youth 17 years and under who want to enter the festival will need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

In another Gay & Lesbian Times commentary, on May 4, deHarte reiterated his sentiments. “Underage and unaccompanied youth will need to take responsibility and be proactive if they want to enter the festival grounds,” he wrote. “They will need to contact the Pride office, obtain tickets and be assigned a buddy/guardian. The ‘buddy’ will act as a chaperon at the festival.”

Peter Ian Cummings, editor of XY Magazine, said he contacted deHarte on June 12 to voice his concern and opposition to the previous policy.

“When I spoke with Ron, he said these matters are normally handled by negotiation and compromise and everything. I said, ‘You know, Ron, this matter is not going to be settled by negotiation and compromise because the entire gay community is against you. There is nobody to negotiate with. You’ve got to change the policy and issue an apology by Friday.’”

Cummings said many community leaders and gay publication editors from across the country were against Pride’s initial policy and he never believed the policy would remain in place.

“The policy wasn’t going to stand. It was either going to be overturned by the Pride committee now or overturned by the Pride committee later. Or the community was going to force it to be overturned on the day [of the festival] by mass civil disobedience,” he said.

deHarte said the reason the Pride board held a special meeting on June 14 was to come to an agreement about the new policy.

“The rhetoric of protest and pickets was nothing new the day that Peter talked to me, and people had been talking about that for weeks on end, ad nauseam,” he said. “The reason why we met on Wednesday is we found a solution. And if the board was in agreement of it, I wanted to make sure we got the word out to the Youth Pride Committee, who was meeting on Friday night [June 16], and we had this information for our volunteer meeting [June 17].”

Local activist Emily Foster, who has met with Pride board members on several occasions since May, presented alternative solutions to the original Pride youth policy. Foster said she met with board members Jeri Dilno and Bob Lay and worked on adopting a revamped policy. She said she suggested the idea of a “youth welcome desk” inside the festival gates.

deHarte said Emily was “instrumental in providing a lot of great ideas” to Pride, and the Pride board incorporated a number of her thoughts, ideas and suggestions into the new policy.

Overall, Foster said she is satisfied Pride incorporated many of her ideas into the amended policy.

“The incentive of a free ticket is pretty big for people who are under 18, so I’m thinking that this will help us get a clear count of how many people under 17 go into the festival,” Foster said. “It will also help us make contact with each and every one of them to let them know: ‘Hey, we care about your safety a lot. We know that you exist and you’re an important part of the community and we want you to get in free.’”

Foster said two local attorneys are purchasing 100 tickets for youth on the first day of the festival and will purchase more if needed for the second day.

“They raised their hands and said, ‘We’ll buy their tickets so that youth can get in free,’” Foster said.

The reason why a separate policy for youth was developed in the first place partially had to do with last year’s Pride, when three volunteers, one staff member and a clown who worked in Pride’s Children’s Garden were discovered to be registered sex offenders, deHarte said.

“Certainly what we came through last year has partial reason into play as to why we would be paying more attention to minors attending the festival,” he said. “It is not the driving force behind this particular issue.”

deHarte said there is a greater realization that more and more youth are coming out at an earlier age and Pride had to recognize the liability of having a large number of unaccompanied minors within the festival grounds.

“Pride as an organization has 100-percent liability for any youth who comes in without their parent, period,” deHarte said. “Whether or not the parent knows that they’re there, we have to take responsibility for that minor who is under our watch. That’s where we’ve come from.”

A Pride board meeting to overview the amended policy took place on June 21. As of press time, information from that meeting was not available.

The 32nd annual San Diego Pride celebration will take place July 28-30.