A couple of weeks ago we learned that NYC Pride was attempting to keep the NYPD away from their pride parade next month. Going one step further, they told any LGBT police officers and family members to not march with them either. This non-inclusive spirit clearly wasn’t just a bad idea cooked up in New York. It’s part of the national LGBT message now and it’s spreading. The same thing is happening in Denver, where their pride parade organizers are similarly pushing to keep any police presence away from the festivities. (CBS Denver)
A time of pride for the gay community is now leaving some of its members out. Bill Hummel is a sergeant in the Aurora Police Department. He is not pleased that police are being told not to participate in this year’s Denver celebration.
As an openly gay police officer in Aurora, I was a bit taken aback by the news we were not welcome at the pride event,” he said.
Aurora now has an openly gay Police Chief Vanessa Wilson and has been represented in past parades.
The annual event is put on by The Center on Colfax. It criticized police handling of Black Lives Matter protests and the treatment of other minority groups.
We’ve dealt with Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson here in the past. She’s really a terrible police chief, but that has nothing to do with her being a lesbian. (I’ll confess here that I honestly didn’t even know she was gay until today.) I suppose she’s been uninvited as well.
The gay police officer mentioned in the excerpt above wrote a letter to the organizers of the parade. He told them, “you are excluding a group of gay, lesbian and transgendered people from participating.” The chief executive of the group organizing the event responded by saying it was “a difficult position to take,” adding that he was aware some people would see it as being “divisive.”
What we’re continuing to see is the melding of various liberal causes across all lines of issues and agendas. The Denver group specifically references how the police have been involved in conflicts that trigger the BLM movement. There’s no mention of any Colorado police dealing out unfair treatment to LGBT suspects. The group is simply adopting the “abolish the police” flag and tacking it on to their own specific issues.
Just as I mentioned when the news about the New York City pride parade broke, it’s tempting to speculate what would happen if the police actually took them at their word and didn’t show up at all for the parade in Denver. I imagine there are still people out there who wouldn’t mind showing up and busting up a parade like that. With no police presence to keep things under control, you never know what might happen.
Thankfully, the cops in virtually every state and city are more responsible than that. Private groups do not get to dictate where the police can or can’t go. And I’m sure they’ll be there doing their jobs just as they always do. And now, if everyone follows the instructions being issued by the parade organizers, they’ll have a few extra officers available to put on the streets. (But they probably won’t be in the best of moods.)
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