The organizers behind Sunday's annual NYC Pride March are defending their decision to allow hospital systems that ended gender-affirming care for minors to participate in the parade.
In a statement Thursday, Heritage of Pride said maintaining those partnerships allows the nonprofit to hold the institutions accountable while supporting LGBTQ+ employees who march with their organizations.
The statement comes in response to calls from trans rights groups, families of trans children and current and former Pride grand marshals to bar those hospital systems from participating in Sunday's march.
In an open letter released earlier this week, the group singled out NYU Langone Health and Mount Sinai Health System, which both ended gender-affirming care for minors earlier this year after the Trump administration threatened to cut federal funding to hospitals that provide those services.
Representatives for NYU Langone and Mount Sinai did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But on Thursday, Heritage of Pride said that while it does not stand behind every decision made by its partners, it remains "committed to creating safe spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community: to gather, march, celebrate and be seen."
"Many of our March contingents, including those of local hospitals and healthcare systems, are driven by the organization's LGBTQ+ groups, not the leaders making system-wide decisions," the nonprofit said in its statement. "And by keeping these partners at the table, we can use our relationships to hold them accountable, advocate for the underrepresented and marginalized and propel progress."
The organization also said it has been in conversations with healthcare institutions about access to gender-affirming care for trans youth and plans to invite families affected by the recent decisions to speak at several Pride events this weekend, including Youth Pride, PrideFest and a Sunday morning press conference.
Eliel Cruz, a cofounder of the Gender Liberation Movement, criticized the decision in a statement Thursday, saying allowing the hospitals to march "provides cover for the harm they've caused and fails to hold them accountable."
