Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that there is a “dialogue” with organizers of the city’s Pride march to reverse their decision to ban uniformed police and correction officers from participating in the festivities.

De Blasio called the ban “wrong,” and said it was disrespectful to gay and lesbian officers who worked within the New York City Police Department to change attitudes towards LGBTQ people.

“It’s a whole different reality in large measure due to them, and they would be excluded, which makes no sense,” de Blasio said on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. “There’s a lot of dialogue going on to try and resolve this.”

However, NYC Pride denied there was any dialogue with the Gay Officers Action League, known as GOAL, a prominent gay and lesbian officers’ group that expressed frustration with Pride’s ban on law enforcement. 

Andrew Thomas, a co-chair of NYC Pride, said in an email that the group had discussed the ban in a meeting with NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison, but that the focus of that meeting, as well as the meetings they’ve had since then, were on public safety.

“We have not spoken with GOAL since our initial meeting with them. No one from GOAL has reached out to us,” Dan Dimant, the media director of NYC Pride, said in an emailed statement. “We have been speaking with the NYPD, but only on matters of operations and logistics. We have regular meetings with our LGBT liaison at the NYPD.”

Earlier this month, NYC Pride said it would ban all exhibitors featuring law enforcement and correction officers until at least 2025.  

The group said the decision was made because Black and Hispanic march attendees may not feel safe in the presence of officers carrying sidearms. 

“What does that present to someone who’s Black, who’s trans, someone like myself who sometimes sees a police officer and feels anxiety?” Thomas, a co-chair of NYC Pride, said shortly after the group announced the ban.

The ban included GOAL, an organization of LGBTQ police officers who famously sued the NYPD in 1996 after the department denied them permission to partake in the Pride march. 

“These are people that have had their own struggle as queer people as members of the community that carry that struggle with them every day of their lives,” said Brian Downey, the president of the group, in response to the ban. 

GOAL did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

De Blasio on Thursday declined to say what kind of solution he wants to see, but that he understood concerns from both sides of the dispute. 

“I think it is thoroughly resolvable in the name of inclusion,” he said. “I think it would be wrong to leave out these officers who want to express their pride, and who serve the city every day.”