(austin powers accent) That's a MAN, baybee!!!
Posted on 06/08/2005 12:10:41 PM PDT by andyk
A federal judge is siding with homosexual activists in America's oldest city, ordering the city of St. Augustine, Fla., to fly 49 "gay-pride" flags on its Bridge of Lions.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams Jr. says the rainbow banners are to be flown for six days starting today.
"Permitting a group to fly their flag from the Bridge of Lions enables that group to say 'We exist and this is what we stand for,'" said Karen Doering, staff attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "By denying this application, these city administrators are denying my clients their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech and equal access under the law. That violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments."
The judicial mandate comes in connection with a lawsuit filed by Rev. Ruth Jensen and Vicki Waldren of the St. Augustine Pride Committee and other pro-homosexual groups, after the city rejected a request to display the banners for a week during June, which is "gay pride" month.
Adams' decision was based in part on First Amendment violations and "irreparable harm and loss if they are prohibited from flying their rainbow flags during the week of the annual gay pride celebration," according to the Florida Times-Union.
The Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine
Jensen, a homosexual-rights activist, had been told by the city the flags could not fly on the bridge, as the structure was reserved for groups of historical significance.
"It goes to affirm for us the importance of following through and not accepting a decision that we don't believe is right," Jensen told the paper. "All too often, groups, particularly minority groups, listen to the decisions that are handed down and accept them without attempting to remedy them."
Attorney Sonya Hoener, who represented the city, said the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to file the suit and suffered no injuries by St. Augustine's rejection.
"Plaintiffs are trying to attribute bad motives to the city when there are none on the record," Hoener said.
She pointed out that the group was allowed last year to carry the flags across the bridge, and allowing the banners might prompt others, such as anti-homosexual groups, to request to fly flags.
The "gay-pride" flag, designed by Gilbert Baker, debuted in 1978 at San Francisco's Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade, with the colors said to represent life, healing, the sun, harmony and spirit.
According to the city's website, St. Augustine, founded in 1565, is the "oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the United States. Forty-two years before the English colonized Jamestown and fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spanish established at St. Augustine this nation's first enduring settlement."
What a fox...
She will be eating dinner at the Y this evening.
They should definitely try the Israeli flag, after all, there are a lot of Jewish people in Floriduh.
Time for "Gun Owners Pride" week.
What a load! Hippies out, gays in, flying the freak flag high! Get a life, ladies!
What you should be hanging out there are your vagina monologue flags, yeah, that's the ticket! Everyone would know what that's about. The rainbow thing is iffy, ya know.
yep, if you enlarge it you will see taco tracks on her upper lip
Bag the fag flags.
Maybe not a nuke, but a big net to hoarde all the nuts together, then take 'em to the bleechers and make 'em watch every stupid parade known to man while choking on funnel cakes.
I do. Because the Confederate battle flag might make a politically protected minority feel "uncomfortable" of offend them.
(austin powers accent) That's a MAN, baybee!!!
"Does this mean the Confederate flag can be flown as well?"
Exactly what I was going to say. How about a flag symbolizing Christian religions?
This somehow falls under the Commerce Clause.
How about the Nazi flag?
Tie a yellow solon round the old oak tree....
Klan-favorers are typically not also gay promoters...what are you trying to say?
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