Adams booed at NYC pride parade, LGBTQ groups boycott mayor’s reception over recent appointees

New York City Mayor Eric Adams received boos and jeers during a Brooklyn pride parade Saturday, as several LGBTQ groups recently boycotted the Democrat’s pride reception over recent appointees. 

Amid a packed street awash with rainbow pride flags, a portion of the crowd near 5th street is heard booing Adams as he passes in video footage shared by City and State NY reporter Jeff Coltin, who tweeted that someone threw an empty water bottle at the mayor.  

The New York Post reported that some attendees yelled profanities at Adams and flipped him the middle finger. One person reportedly shouted, “Shame on Salgado! Shame on Adams!” referring to Rev. Erick Salgado, whom Adams appointed in February to lead the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. 

According to the newspaper, the crowd also cheered Adams elsewhere along the parade route. 

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“See that’s love there,” the mayor told the Post, pointing and smiling at a woman giving him the finger. “To the 10 to 20,000 people out here that love me and know that I’ve been a hard fighter and the three people that don’t, what are you going to say? This is New York. It’s part of the love you have.”

Four prominent LGBTQ groups in New York City — Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, Stonewall Democrats of NYC, Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens and Equality New York – issued a statement earlier this month announcing that they would boycott Adams’ Pride reception hosted at Gracie Mansion over his appointments of Salgado and another pastor, Fernando Cabrera. 

Cabrera, a Christian pastor from the Bronx and a former City Council member, was appointed in February as the senior adviser to the mayor’s new Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships. 

“Mayor Adams has tested the boundaries of the LBGTQ community to see where he can overstep – including who he can afford to disregard for the sake of his own interests,” the joint statement said. “Mayor Adams’ only interests are his own and prioritizing the needs of policing and surveillance institutions in the city at the expense of investments into education, mental health, community health and LGBTQ services.”

The LGBTQ groups called on Adams to rescind his decision to bring back the plainclothes anti-gun crime unit, which the mayor recently credited for helping to drive down gun violence through targeted gang takedowns in the past few weeks. The unit was disbanded in 2020 by his predecessor Bill de Blasio. 

As a state senator, Adams delivered an emotional floor speech advocating for the state’s historic Marriage Equality Bill in December 2009 and voted in favor of the gay marriage, according to the Post. 

In April, Adams also joined New York City LGBTQ leaders in condemning what they deemed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida. Supporters said the parental rights legislation rightfully banned classroom instruction on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade.

In appointing Cabrera in February, Adams issued a statement saying he heard and accepted an apology from the pastor over past remarks praising the Uganda government in 2014 for passing an “anti-homosexuality bill” permitting the execution of gay people, according to NY 1. 

Salgado, an evangelical pastor from Brooklyn, ran unsuccessfully for New York City mayor in 2013 on a campaign opposing gay marriage, but in a statement accepting Adams’s appointment in February said his “views have evolved as society has evolved” and his mission “will be to lift up immigrant communities across our city, including LGBTQ+ immigrants, who often face barriers to accessing needed services,” according to The New York Daily News.