Lawmakers Support Students' Anti-Abortion Parade Float - was barred from Natl Cherry Festival parade

clickondetroit.com ^

[chance33_98]

Lawmakers Support Students' Anti-Abortion Parade Float

Officials Say Parade Is Not Platform For Views

POSTED: 1:59 p.m. EDT July 3, 2003 UPDATED: 4:10 p.m. EDT July 3, 2003

Four northern Michigan lawmakers are siding with a group of anti-abortion students whose entry was barred from a National Cherry Festival parade.

The festival last month rejected the entry from the 70 members of Grand Traverse Area Students for Life.

The group had marched in the Junior Royale Parade for the past seven years. But festival organizers say the Traverse City event is meant to be a celebration of community, and not a platform for views on national issues like abortion.

Sens. Michelle McManus and Jason Allen, and Reps. Howard Walker and David Palsrok have written a letter asking the festival to let the students participate in the parade next year.

Tom Kern, the festival's executive director, says the anti-abortion group isn't being singled out. He says 21 entries to the festival's three parades were barred for various reasons.

[putupon]

I wonder if I can get this reply in before someone else makes a corny wisecrack about how if the girls had their cherries the abortion issue wouldn't be relevant.

[chance33_98]

I am waiting to find out what the gay float was, two big cherries and a banana between them?

[knarf]

A parade is a show of strength.

I'm no scholar on the subject, but it seems to me that a parade was/is designed to show 'the people' the military might of a nation or city or something.

Parades evolved (I suppose) into community affairs showing the 'might' of schools, bands, 4H, FFA, fire and police departments etc.

If we indeed are 'growing' (as the RATS want to say the Constitution is ... ) then we should be able to show our 'might' in those areas that more directly exhibit our thought processes.

After all ... As a man thinketh, so is he.

So if a parade association rejected my anti-abortion float, I guess I would just round up my posse and walk the route carrying banners and/or posters and passing out literature.

[FrdmLvr]

But festival organizers say the Traverse City event is meant to be a celebration of community, and not a platform for views on national issues like abortion.

Since when have they ever cared about that? Only when it's a conservative viewpoint being expressed. For an city that depends so heavily on tourism it sure is becoming politically correct.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP