“....even the local KKK was afraid to get involved with him.”
Yeah, you know you got problems when you’re too nuts for the local hate group. Sheesh.
I think I vaguely remember that gay bar thing. I was either in high school or nursing school at Conemaugh. It was about 15 yrs ago, no? Ahhh the memories. Now my days are filled with progressive snots running around the UPMC campus with their self-righteous “enlightened” attitude. What I wouldn’t give for a couple ‘o rednecks. *sigh* Guess I’ll have to come home for a visit soon.
Bully PulpitBy Marty LevineIn Pittsburgh Newsweekly, 6.10.98 Page 1When a gay bar opened in rural Somerset County, PA, a Christian group fractured the community with its message of hate....Since March 13, 1997, Gowen and members of the local Bible Anabaptist Church have been trying to close the Casa Nova Lounge by picketing every weekend night. The church's leader, Ron McRae, is either following or leading the neighbors (opinions differ) in curbside picketing--the latest in a long series of loud and persistent public appearances for which McRae has been arrested in several states.
McRae calls his action preaching. Bar patrons call it hate. It has divided and possessed this quiet country place, where bar patrons, picketers and the farmer who hosted the Ku Klux Klan's triple cross burning aimed at the bar last spring all went through high school together.
Buckshot hit the door of the Casa Nova Lounge before the picketers first arrived. That's about the only thing both sides agree on in this tiny, sparsely populated, conservative hamlet halfway between Somerset and Johnstown, once mostly Mennonite and still hanging onto a few farms on either side of a winding two-lane rural route in the Laurel Highlands.
...Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night for the past 15 months the protestors arrive anywhere from dinnertime to sundown and stay as long as there is activity at the bar, sometimes as late as the 2:30 a.m. closing time. They parade with
signs, shout names and make speeches, and gather around their campfire. More than a year of this, often pitting neighbor against neighbor, has created a volatile atmosphere.
Before Jenner Township regulated parking more closely the picketers sometimes blocked the road or approached passing cars, which pushed some neighbors to the bar's side early on. For other local residents the KKK appearance was the final straw.Pat Cramer, for her part, seems to feel the Klan acted more sensibly than the protestors. After the Klan rally a year ago, local Klan leader Barry Black met with Pat Cramer and agreed not to return. "I have to give Barry Black credit," she says. "He knew to pull his people off because he didn't trust McRae."
If the KKK couldn't trust McRae, birthers shouldn't trust his phone interview of Obama's grandma either.