> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.theredlighthouse.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I Would Not Have Gone to the Festival at St. Martin's. On Tuesday Southlake Told the Church It May Not Host It, and Gave No Reason. I Have Argued for Years That the Reason Is the Whole Point. - URL: https://www.theredlighthouse.org/discerner-southlake-st-martins-no-reason-given/ - Published: 2026-09-20T15:03:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-20T15:03:29.000Z - Description: Southlake, Texas, voted unanimously on September 15 to deny a permit for a Pride festival on the grounds of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church, after its planning commission recommended approval. No debate, no questions, no reason. The Discerner would not have gone, and says why that matters. - Author: The Red Lighthouse - Tags: The Discerner, News Stories I have voted no without saying why. Once, in a church business meeting years ago, on a proposal I did not like from a man I did, and I remember choosing the silence on purpose. If I said nothing, I would not have to defend anything. The vote passed and the man never asked me, and I have thought about that silence more than I have thought about the proposal. On Tuesday night the city council of Southlake, Texas, voted unanimously to deny a permit for an October festival on the grounds of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church. There was no debate. Nobody on the dais asked the organizer a question. Nobody gave a reason. The city's planning and zoning commission had recommended approval in August. The council said no, and then said nothing, and the meeting moved on. The festival is Pride Kel-So, a celebration for the LGBTQ community in Keller and Southlake. I want to say plainly that I would not have gone. That is exactly why I am writing about it. Here is what is on the record, because the record is short. Pride Kel-So was held for the first time last year at St. Martin's and drew about sixteen hundred people, so this year's application, for as many as twenty five hundred, needed a special use permit. The organizers, April Dreyson and her wife Shaina, spent months meeting the city's requirements. The planning and zoning commission looked at space, parking and the fact that this was private property, and recommended a yes. On September 15 the council heard two speakers. One was a resident, Paul Segal, who told the council that last year's event "was abhorrent" and named drag performers as the reason. The other was the Rev. Ellen Singer, an associate pastor at St. Martin's, who told the council her church had a long habit of opening its doors: to scouts, to a soccer club, to Alcoholics Anonymous. Fewer than ten residents had written in opposition. One had written in support. Then the vote, and the silence. When CBS News Texas asked the city to explain, the city pointed to the meeting video, where the item was "considered, and the City Council took action." The mayor and council members did not immediately answer KERA. Dreyson told CBS she felt blindsided, and said the silence itself was the message: "you don't belong here." Now the honest part. A great many Christians who read this site will feel, on first hearing, something like relief. I felt it. I hold the historic Christian teaching on marriage and I am not going to pretend otherwise in an essay about candor. But that was never the question before the council. The question before the council was whether a church may host a lawful gathering on its own land, with adequate parking and a favorable staff review, and be told no by the government without being told why. Strip it to that and see whether you still feel relief. Congress did not. In 2000 it passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act after years of testimony that zoning boards were keeping churches out of towns without ever saying so: a variance denied here, a permit tabled there, an individualized assessment with no findings attached. The statute exists because a hearing with no questions and no reasons is the oldest tool a land use board owns. It shields storefront Baptists and Orthodox shuls alike, and it does not ask what the church believes before it applies. It cannot. A liberty that checks your doctrine first is a license, and licenses get revoked. I do not know why Southlake said no. That sentence is the whole problem. Maybe there was a public order concern, a traffic study, something about the crowd size. If so, it belongs on the record, and the council could have put it there in ninety seconds. Robert Frost's neighbor in "Mending Wall" repeats his father's saying about good fences and "will not go behind" it, and Frost's narrator cannot tell whether the man has a reason or only a saying. That is where St. Martin's stands tonight. It cannot tell either. And here is what a church in your town should notice. Whatever power Southlake used on Tuesday, it now has. The next application from a congregation might be a revival on a soccer field, a Christmas market, a recovery ministry feeding two thousand in a parking lot. The council can say no to that, too, and say nothing, and point to the video. "With the measure you use it will be measured to you," Jesus said, and he did not say it about liturgy. He said it about judgment, which is the business city councils are in. Singer told the council her prayer was that "this event can happen in some form someday, a safe gathering place for members of the community where we can celebrate the diversity of God's creation." I would not have written that sentence. I would defend to the last her right to host the thing she prays for, on land her church owns, and to be told the reason if the answer is no. Dreyson says Pride will happen anyway, somewhere, in some form, and she is probably right; events find fields. What does not happen anyway is the reason. Somebody has to insist on it. In that church meeting years ago the man I outvoted deserved a sentence from me and never got one, and I have carried the silence longer than he has. Southlake owes St. Martin's a sentence. If you live near enough, ask for it. If you do not, ask whether your own council has ever given your church one, and whether you would have noticed if it had not. ### Sources 1. KERA News, "Southlake City Council denies LGBTQ+ pride event permit without explanation," Andy Lusk, September 17, 2026: [keranews.org](https://www.keranews.org/news/2026-09-17/southlake-city-council-denies-lgbtq-pride-event-permit-without-explanation?ref=theredlighthouse.org) 2. CBS News Texas, "A North Texas city denied a Pride festival a permit. Organizers still don't know why," Eric Valadez, September 17, 2026: [cbsnews.com](https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/southlake-pride-festival-permit-denied-pride-kel-so-september-2026/?ref=theredlighthouse.org) 3. The Christian Post, "Texas city council denies permit for LGBT pride event at Episcopal church," September 2026: [christianpost.com](https://www.christianpost.com/news/texas-city-council-denies-permit-for-lgbt-pride-event-at-church.html?ref=theredlighthouse.org) 4. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, 42 U.S.C. 2000cc: [law.cornell.edu](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000cc?ref=theredlighthouse.org) 5. Matthew 7:2 (ESV); Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" (1914).