City of St. Augustine Mayor-Elect JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR. has stated that everyone should have a "seat at the table."
Based on that commitment, we expect Mr. BOLES to work to repeal the City's invidiously retaliatory, discriminatory June 13, 2005 policy banning all but government flags from being flown on the Bridge of Lions (BOL). He will also want to work to adopt a Human Rights Ordinance (HRO), as in some seven other Florida jurisdictions.
Mr. BOLES was the only St. Augustine Commissioner who had the courage to vote against Mayor GEORGE GARDNER's rude government-flags-only-Bridge of Lions (BOL) flag rule on June 13, 2005.
We salute Mayor-elect Boles for that vote and for joining VICE MAYOR SUSAN BURK, who voted with Mr. BOLES to support Rainbow flags at the May 23, 2005 meeting (but missed the June 13, 2005 meeting).
These two Commissioners, both lawyers, are the only consistent votes on our City Commission in favor of respecting the First Amendment
The government-flags-only policy abolished what a federal judge found was a public forum for freedom of expression. This is only one more outrage wrought by soon-to-be-ex-mayor GEORGE GARDNER, who brags of attending 36 churches but has seemingly learned nothing in any of them.
The government-flags-only policy is insulting to everyone who lives in this 441-year-old-city, which is saddled with a government still lacking decent respect for human rights in a place where the Declaration of Independence was burned in 1776, and where John Adams and John Hancock were burned in effigy in 1776 in our Slave Market Square).
Only one more vote is required to erase soon-to-be-ex-Mayor GARDNER's angry June 13, 2005 government-flag-flying only policy, as insulting a vote as ever held by any segregationist government anywhere in the world. Only because a federal court ruled that our Bridge of Lions was a public forum under the First Amendment did MAYOR GARDNER, COMMISSIONER ERROL JONES and Commissioner DONALD CRICHLOW determine that they would end the public forum. Bigger homophobes have never before greased a chair in any City Hall -- the BOL flagflying vote is part of what Mayor GARDNER admits to be "rampant corruption" in City Hall..
Like GARDNER, his government-flags-only policy is an embarrassment to a great city, which St. Augustine Record's Peter Guinta calls this "small but cosmopolitan city (see below).
City Commissioners must adopt a Human Rights Ordinance, banning discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment and education, extirpating discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, and sexual orientation from the Nation's Oldest City.
Our City of St. Augustine has an existing housing anti-discrimination ordinance on the books dating to 1964. It's time to update it, provide real remedies, cover more people, and add employment, education and public accommodations.
It's time and it's right. We must make amends for our City Founder's anti-Gay animus, which ended in murder in 1566.
It is fitting that such an ordinance be adopted here because St. Augustine was founded by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, perpetrator of what is North America's first recorded anti-Gay hate crime, in 1566.
We spend public funds to "honor" Menendez, who is guilty of what may be the first, recorded anti-Gay hate crime in North American history: he admitted having a Gay man killed (the story was written down by Menendez's brother-in-law).
Are we "honoring" the first in a long line of dictatorial government officials?
Does that honor empower soon-to-be-ex-Mayor GEORGE GARDNER to insult anyone who asks them questions?
Where does our City "honor" and celebrate the history of the people who did most of the working in its history?
In 1566, Florida's first Governor had a Gay man killed because he was a "Sodomite and a Lutheran." Florida's first Governor Pedro Menendez de Aviles is "honored" with a statue in front of City Hall, an oil painting in the Commissioner's secret inner sanctum (a gift of the Spanish government), Commissioners' annual visits to Spain (at public expense), festivals for his birthday and landing/invasion, streets and a high school.
That's rather like celebrating Cain, the first murderer in the Bible, by spending public funds and erecting statues, paintings, holidays and high schools in Cain's honor.
Meanwhile, our City does virtually nothing to honor the Native Americans and African Americans who did the work and paid the price for government abuses of power, 1566-2006. This is due to Mayor GEORGE GARDNER's Philistine concept of "positive" and "negative" history -- one that is not taught by scholars at any university -- yet another of GARDNER's open-mouth, insert-foot statements that will not be missed when he ceases to be Mayor of St. Augustine, Florida
Let freedom ring and diversity reign in the Nation's Oldest City.
We need to abolish the Bridge of Lions (BOL) government-flagflying-only policy aimed at discriminating against GLBT people and we need a Human Rights Ordinance (HRO).
By their votes on the BOL and HRO, Commissioners can help heal history's wounds and build a better City -- he sort of place that is attractive to young residents, who will help determine our Citys future. (See below)
Homophobia is decidedly unhip and is bad for business.
What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment