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."
Oh I hope zee judges are replaced REAL soon.
BTW, that article you freep mailed me went far and wide in email.
Yep, butch haircut and tee shirt--says it all...
I wonder how to interpret this ruling...
Part of me thinks the judge is gay-sympathetic and would never allow a Confederate flag to be flown
OR
the judge is ordering St Augustine to fly the flag because he feels every group should be allowed to.
LOL
Wonder if we can find some group to test this hypothesis? Any takers?
Right. How 'bout an FR flag? Where's our Betsy Ross?
(At first I thought your handle was pronounced in such a way as to imply lesbian advocacy. My apolgies.)
How about the Nazi Party flag? The Al-Qaeda banner? Sheesh.....will the idiocy never end???
Is that Pat?
Jesus said: "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." -from THE BIBLE: Matthew 19:4-6
To me she looks like a young Groucho Marx without the mustache.
No Confederate flags because these people don't "exist" anymore.
I think they should "fly" this judge right out of a high-rise window.
ONE OF THE LIONS 
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