Philadelphia – Photo: Marc Dufresne via iStockphoto
Philadelphia is extending its reputation as the “City of Brotherly Love” with plans to open one of the nation’s first LGBTQ visitors’ centers.
Slated to open in January 2026, the Philly Pride Visitors Center will debut in the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood of Midtown Village, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“We don’t just welcome diversity — we celebrate it,” said Kathryn Ott Lovell, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation. “Our hope is that the Philly Pride Visitors Center becomes a place where LGBTQ+ visitors feel they belong from the moment they arrive.”
Philadelphia boasts a large LGBTQ population — about 198,000 residents, according to a 2021 Williams Institute brief. Beyond its role as the birthplace of American democracy, the city also has a rich queer history dating back to the early 1900s.
In 1965, Dewey’s Restaurant was the site of multiple sit-ins protesting the diner’s repeated refusal to serve patrons based on their sexual orientation, gender expression, and cultural nonconformity.
After several protesters were arrested for “disorderly conduct” during the first sit-in, a second protest succeeded — no one was arrested, and what the Janus Society called “indiscriminate denials of service” at the restaurant came to an end.
Drum, a 1960s Philadelphia culture and news magazine for gay men, described the protest as “the first sit-in of its kind in the history of the United States.”
“Philadelphia has always been a trailblazer in LGBTQ+ history, from the first Reminder Day marches in 1965 — four years before Stonewall — to the Dewey’s sit-in, where LGBTQ+ youth stood up to a restaurant’s refusal to serve them,” said Philadelphia Gay News founder Mark Segal. Segal will curate historical content to ensure the city’s LGBTQ legacy is authentically represented in the new center.
The announcement comes at a time when federal agencies have been accused of removing or downplaying references to LGBTQ history and culture from government resources.
In March 2025, NPR reported that references to LGBTQ people, women, and people of color had been removed from several federal government websites. In compliance with President Trump’s executive orders eliminating “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” policies, even the National Park Service deleted mentions of transgender people from a historian Wendy Rouse article on the suffragist movement.
The FBI has arrested a Texas man for allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting at a local Pride event.
Joshua Cole, of Anson, Texas, allegedly posted a Facebook comment earlier this month criticizing the Abilene Pride Alliance for banning weapons and certain bags at its annual indoor festival, held September 20 at the Abilene Convention Center on the same day as the group's Pride parade.
The original poster argued the group could not legally stop people from carrying guns into a city-owned building and shared a screenshot of the event flyer listing the venue and restrictions.
My first protest, as my mother tells it, was as a toddler. In our Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego, circa 1970, she was moved to join a small group in opposition to some new construction. As she was moved, so was I, on four stroller wheels. My birth may have coincided with the weekend of the Stonewall Riots, but I didn't learn about that till much later.
And, of course, I have no memory of this inaugural outing with Mom to fight the power. Today, my mother looks at current events, disgusted by the White House, and wonders aloud whether protests such as the Oct. 18 No Kings Day actions across the country and beyond do much. At her age, she's certainly entitled to be winding down. Not that she was ever big on protests to begin with -- my first was her last, possibly her only.
Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Hampton Medical Center in Virginia were reportedly warned in October that they could face discipline -- or even be fired -- for wearing or displaying rainbow-themed items, including official VA Pride lanyards.
The warning is the latest example of the Trump administration’s efforts to downplay or erase acknowledgment of LGBTQ identity under the guise of eliminating so-called "wokeness" and other references to identity-based characteristics deemed "divisive."
As reported by The Advocate, local leadership at the medical center sent out the directive citing an "executive order," though it was unclear whether that referred to Donald Trump’s directive banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in federal agencies, or his order declaring that the U.S. government recognizes only two biological sexes as valid.
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