Mayor Boles Should Not Presume to Issue Gag Orders, Especially to His Own Mother!

As documented below, St. Augustine needs a national park, seashore and scenic highway.

As documented below, St. Augustine and other local governments have a nasty history of coercing, restraining and chilling free speech rights by citizens and employees.

Mayor JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR., is a lawyer who supported First Amendment rights twice in 2005 (on Bridge of Lions Rainbow flags).

BOLES has not yet publicly endorsed the St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Parkway. Mayor BOLES' mother, Maureen Boles, supports the park. See below.

Now Mayor BOLES has issued a gag order to his mother, telling her not to state her opinions, because I quoted her on this blog (and in the St. Augustine Record column reprinted below).

Mayor BOLES' is being sexist and chuavinistic. His mother has a right to speak her mind on historic preservation and environmental protection issues. She has a right to speak. The public has a right to hear her thoughts.

Mayor BOLES thinks he can cabin public debate by censoring his own mother. That's cruelly unfair.

Maureen Boles is a duly appointed member of the St. Augustine City Commission's Historic Preservation Advisory Board. As such, she has First Amendment rights. This is not the first time that advisory board members' rights have been trampled upon -- see below for discussion of the Street Trees Advisory Committee and what City Planning and Zoning Director MARK KNIGHT did to them (threatening them for disagreeing with him, threatening to fire them and abolish the committee, associated with our City's Tree City USA designation).

Even if Maureen Boles were not a member of a city advisory panel, she has First Amendment rights. Her wisdom must be heard.

For the record, I would no more tell my own mother what to think or what to say than I would tell her what to wear or what to pray.

I reckon that Mayor BOLES is being overbearing and disrespectful toward public rights to speak again -- this time, toward his own mother's rights. Enough.

Let Maureen Boles and other city board members, employees and residents speak without fear or favor of our own Cato the Censor.

Let freedom ring.

As my mother, Mayor Elizabeth Donlon Slavin, would put it best, Mayor JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR. must "drop the oyster and leave the wharf."

Let Maureen Boles speak her mind, without fear or favor of Hizzoner.