May 20, 1998

Evangelist John Butler Book, a local right-wing homophobe, is complaining because the city of Orlando is allowing Watermark, a gay and lesbian newspaper, to fly rainbow flags on more than 300 light posts in downtown Orlando in June to celebrate National Gay Pride Month. (Watermark is being allowed to do this in return for paying $15,000.) Book is claiming that the flying of the flags amounts to the city allowing gay-rights supporters to use city property to make a political statement. He has been mobilizing local evangelicals to call Orlando City Hall with their objections. He is also asking those who object to the flags to wear black armbands to a City Council meeting on June 1. In a radio interview on this issue Book repeated the time-worn anti-gay myths that AIDs is primarily a "gay disease" and that gay men are "child molestors" and supporters of NAMBLA, a pro-pedophile group. He claimed too that 98 percent of the local population opposes the gay and lesbian community.

What you can do
Call the Downtown Development Board, at 246-2555, and express your support for the flying of the flags. Mention that Gay Pride Month is not primarily a political event but instead is similar to an ethnic pride celebration, and that the rainbow flag is a cherished symbol of the pride and unity of the gay community. Also mention that you believe Orlando should publicly espouse the values of tolerance and diversity by allowing local communities that are having celebrations to display their symbols.

Ben Markeson I'm a first-generation Floridian, a second-generation American, a college drop-out and have a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate bent. I edited and published two local "alternative" newspapers - The Orlando Collegian and The Orlando Spectator (three if you count The Orlando Reporter, which had one paper issue before becoming an e-zine), and also free-lanced for The Orlando Weekly. But I don't call myself a journalist because that sounds pretentious. Other Articles I've Written