Kudos to Mayor Boles, Faye Armitage

St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles greeted St. Augustine Gay Pride day celebrants Saturday, the second year in a row the mayor greeted us.

Democratic Congressional candidate Faye Armitage was also there, spending nearly five hours meeting her GLBT constituents. Armitage was endorsed by Equality Florida in her race against Congressman JOHN LUIGI MICA last year.

We've come a long way as a City since 2005, when it took a federal court order for equal rights to fly Rainbow flags on our St. Augustine Bridge of Lions. (The City had previously allowed Flagler College and the Broward Yacht Company to fly their flags, with no history connection, whereas the Gay Pride group established 11,000 years of history, including the first hate crime in North America, where Pedro Menendez de Aviles ordered a Gay French translator killed because he was "a Sodomite and a Lutheran).

Tellingly, then-Commissioner Joe Boles was the only City Commissioner who got it right -- twice -- voting for the Rainbow flags on the Bridge and then against banning all but government flags from our Bridge (after Talk of the Town's homophobic soreheads emitted some 32 pages of homophobic screeds, which three City Commissioners twice mistook for bona fide public opinion, as opposed to what it really was, which is right-wing Republican sock puppets.

Hats off to Mayor Bole and future Congresswoman Armitage, for respecting our equality and our humanity.