From: PLAGALOne@aol.com Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 18:56:44 -0400 Subject: RAINBOW FLAG AT BOSTON PRIDE Media Release from: PRO-LIFE ALLIANCE OF GAYS AND LESBIANS Post Office Box 33292 Washington, D.C. 20033 (202) 223-6697 Internet: PlagalOne@aol.com For Further Information: Philip Arcidi Tel: (508) 369-0700 Pro-Life Gays meet the Rainbow Police Looking for a place to get your rainbow flag trampled? Take it to Gay Pride in Boston. If your banner has a rainbow spectrum with the profile of an unborn child in the middle, it could end up like ours: knocked to the ground by some self-proclaimed guardians of queer orthodoxy. On June 10, at this year's Pride Festival on the Charles River, I was accosted by a contingent of these guardians, out on patrol to bash flags they deemed counterrevolutionary. Flags like the one I and a companion, James Geller, brought that afternoon. The politically correct inspection team -- a dozen lesbians touring the festival grounds -- pulled down our rainbow flag and trampled it in the dirt. Our crime: a flag with the profile of a preborn infant, an image these women found threatening. When they saw it, their rational faculties gave way to paranoia. They jeered. They slandered. Fearful of rational discussion, they resorted to intimidation. You couldn't concoct a more damaging caricature of women than the one they made of themselves. Stoked up with hate and fear, they condemned our pro-life perspective as gay heresy. Next they crowded around and sat on our table, and stole folders and surveys we'd brought to Pride. Having yanked our flag to the ground, they tried to pull down our companion banner, whose pink script identified us as The Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. The horde labelled us Fascists and decreed we had no right to be at Pride. They were itinerant censors who turned the afternoon's festivities into a turf war: defending our property from seizure, not to mention our Constitutional right of free speech, was at stake. I asked my companion to get help. While he looked for the police, the crowd's jeers crescendoed as its number increased: the dozen instigators had grown to about fifty. They refused to hear the pleas of at least one pro-abortion lesbian who told them to stop; the mob was reeling on its own momentum. The right of free speech was driven into exile that afternoon. Diversity ceased to be a gay virtue when the foot soldiers of gay rectitude found two right to lifers in their midst. They said they wanted us banished from Pride. They got their wish: when the police came upon the swarm around us, they told us we'd better leave right away, because they couldn't ensure our safety if we stayed. It didn't matter to the police that we weren't the aggressors, that we hadn't stolen anyone's property, or that our free speech rights bad been silenced by force. The police's inaction bodes ominously for all gays and lesbians: it implies that the rule of the mob prevails when the gay community gets together. First amendment rights don't matter when you see a bunch of queers waving colored flags and enjoying life out of closet doors. And if you see gays and lesbians abusing each other, you needn't pretend that their civil rights are as good as those of straights; just let the noisiest queers have their way. As I ran the gauntlet that afternoon, I recalled that Governor Casey of Pennsylvania, a pro-life Democrat, met a similar fate in a New York City auditorium. Shouted down by a mob of heckling women, he left with his speech undelivered. He did not summon the police; we couldn't afford to be so diplomatic. I hope New York's police would have been more helpful to the Governor than Boston's were to us. Suppose we were encircled by homophobes, instead of lesbians, and the police said they couldn't ensure our safety. How would the gay community have reacted to their negligence? With an uproar. The press would have condemned it as a fiasco of justice. But when the same thing happened at Gay Pride, there was not a word of it in any of the Boston media. Our ouster makes a mockery of the gay community's demand for inclusion in mainstream society. How can we claim that gays and lesbians are as diverse as the nation if we deny a place for gay pro-lifers? When we let a mob drive pro-life gays from Pride, we trivialize "diversity": it becomes a hollow incantation, the whine of a manipulative child. It's time we recognized that homophobes don't have a monopoly on intolerance. And that no one has a monopoly on diversity. Philip Arcidi President, Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians [BACKGROUND -- PREVIOUS PRESS RELEASE: 10 June 1995. Boston, Massachusetts. A jeering, threatening crowd of abortion supporters forced a small contingent of gay pro-lifers to quit the Boston Gay Pride festival today under protection of a police escort. The pro-abortion crowd, numbering at least fifty persons, mainly women, surrounded a table where two representatives of PLAGAL, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, were greeting passersby at the festival. The hecklers shouted insults and tried forcibly to close down PLAGAL's exhibit, claiming that pro- life gays had no right to be at Pride. Philip Arcidi, President of PLAGAL, and James Geller, a PLAGAL member, were handing out brochures, distributing surveys on lesbian and gay sentiments on abortion, and spreading PLAGAL's pro-life message. PLAGAL is an independent alliance of over 400 lesbians and gay men from across the country who advance the pro-life message within the lesbian and gay community. Mr. Arcidi and Mr. Geller remained calm and nonviolent while the agitators obstructed the access of interested lesbians and gays to PLAGAL's table. When the crowd circled the table, sat on the table, tried to pull down PLAGAL's banner, rolled up PLAGAL's rainbow flag, scattered PLAGAL's brochures, and stole the completed surveys awaiting tabulation, Mr. Geller asked the organizers of the festival to come over and protect his and Mr. Arcidi's first amendment rights. Later, the festival organizers came to the table with several police officers. One of the police officers spoke to some of the women shouting derogatory comments, and asked the women sitting on and crowding around the PLAGAL table to move. Mr. Arcidi and Mr. Geller explained that the agitators were obstructing their freedom to speak about PLAGAL, blockading the table PLAGAL had registered and paid for, and were damaging PLAGAL's property. The police and festival organizers told Mr. Arcidi and Mr. Geller that they should leave the festival immediately because their safety could not be guaranteed. Michael Wasserman, who managed the festival, said the same. At this point, the crowd of hecklers was continuing to grow and their shouts and curses showed no sign of abating. Mr. Arcidi and Mr. Geller acceded to the request of the police and organizers and left under escort.]