Hate on parade

With emotions running high, there could be trouble when gays march in Lawrence

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

"We're doing this for you so that these people don't ruin your future."

The middle-aged Lawrence woman glanced over at her husband, a local minister, as she rubbed her young son's back, reassuring him that gays would not be allowed to destroy the town's "moral fiber." Outside the City Hall meeting room in which they and more than 150 other angry Lawrence residents had gathered, uniformed police officers patrolled the halls, hoping their presence would prevent citizens from erupting into violence. Two hundred other antigay protesters stood outside the stone building, where more police were stationed on the front steps.

Inside, almost lost in the crowd, were 10 gay activists. They sat anxiously in the meeting room, awaiting a five-member city council subcommittee's decision on their request to hold a gay-rights parade in June.

For Ingred Rivera, a 26-year-old graduate student at Brandeis University, the April 9 hearing marked the end of a month of what she calls some of the most overt prejudice she has ever experienced. "When I first applied for a parade permit on March 9 I was full of hope that the gay community would finally feel like an integrated part of the community," says Rivera, who filed the application on behalf of the Gay and Lesbian Community Advocates of Lawrence (GLCAL). "Instead, we were taunted, jeered at, and discriminated against."

Although the council decided in GLCAL's favor that day, allowing it to hold its "Lesbigaytrans Pride March," the conflict is not over. The emotions that surfaced during the public hearing, and the controversy that preceded it, will only grow more intense. In fact, many believe gay-rights opponents are lying in wait for June 14, when the parade will march from Lawrence's South Common north to the Loft and Ladle Pub, just across the Merrimac River. One thing's for sure: there's a serious, unresolved conflict brewing between Lawrence's Hispanic religious community (the city's population is about 69 percent Hispanic) and local gay activists.

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Members of the gay community say the prejudice surrounding their request for a parade permit shows that Lawrence is a city where one's constitutional rights can and will be ignored if public opinion gets in the way.

It's those constitutional issues that prompted Andover-based lawyer Chester Darling to come to the gay activists' aid. Darling, ironically, is the same lawyer who worked with war veterans in South Boston to keep gay-rights activists out of Southie's annual St. Patrick's Day parade two years ago. Darling says he contacted GLCAL's two attorneys and offered his assistance because he is "well-versed in parade law." He adds, "This is a First Amendment issue. Just as in South Boston, citizens have a right to organized assembly."

In June 1995 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council -- the organization that sponsors the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Southie -- has the authority under the First Amendment to exclude groups whose views clash with the message it wishes to convey.

"Those veterans had the right to organize a parade and determine for themselves who would participate," says Darling. "Similarly, this group in Lawrence also has every right to organize a parade. This has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It's a constitutional issue."

But despite what the law says, Hispanic religious leaders in Lawrence are firmly opposed to anything that might indicate public acceptance of homosexuality. Over the past month, several have voiced their concerns in the most disdainful terms. "We don't need to deal with all the issues [a gay-rights parade] brings up," said the Reverend Juan Romero, pastor of the Church of God, two days before the final hearing. "This will damage the community and the image it upholds."

Other local ministers expressed similar sentiments on April 9, when concerned members of the community were allowed to state their views. The Reverend Edward Rodriguez preached that women bear children through "natural" heterosexual unions and that lesbian relationships, in which children can't be conceived without outside help, are wrong. "It is not biological," he said.

And the Reverend Pedro Leonardo of the Fountain of Salvation Christian Church said the city councilors would be taking "a giant step backward" if they voted in favor of the parade. He referred to Boston's gay-rights parade two years ago as an example of what might happen if the permit were granted: in Boston, he says, he saw four half-naked women fondling each other in public. "We don't need that kind of attention," said Leonardo.

GLCAL's request for a parade permit suffered many setbacks on the way to final approval, but city officials say prejudice had nothing to do with them. On March 21, two weeks after Rivera submitted the group's application, it was rejected by Lawrence's ordinance committee, the city council group that rules on which public events are allowed to occur. Chairman Jose Santiago says the request was rejected because the organizers didn't complete the necessary paperwork and failed to attend a meeting scheduled for March 19.

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Rivera, however, says she was never informed about the meeting. "They said they needed a formal application, which doesn't even exist," adds Rivera. "To this day, we haven't submitted anything more than the original request, and they haven't asked for anything else."

Nevertheless, the request was eventually forwarded to a city council meeting on April 7 for a final vote. That meeting was adjourned before a decision could be made, because protesters from local Hispanic churches disrupted the proceedings with foot-stomping, chanting, and verbal attacks. When the council reconvened two days later to resolve the issue, each councilor spoke about concerns surrounding the parade.

"We are not homophobic," Quarterone assured the crowd prior to the vote. "There is no reason to make a public media spectacle of this event when the issue was merely a procedural one concerning the proper paperwork." (In fact, he contends, many other groups' requests for event permits were denied for similar procedural reasons.) Quarterone says he does fear some public protest may accompany the June parade. Yet he sees no need for any more attention to the issue. "It's been resolved," he says. "There's nothing more we can do."

Gay activists, though, believe the battle is not over. Jonathan Leavitt, a 31-year-old local activist, says participating groups must prepare for some level of resistance on parade day. "I've been organizing events for about 10 years, and I was shocked at the intense opposition surrounding the request," he says.

"There is definite bias concerning our request for a parade," adds Leavitt, the head of the grass-roots community group of which GLCAL is a part. "For instance, there are a half-dozen or so unsigned permits [outstanding] right now for events that have already occurred. Why are some people allowed to hold events without any real authorization, yet we were forced to jump through hoops to get a parade permit?"

Twenty-three-year-old UMass student and GLCAL member Jennifer Kenney says that until religion and politics are separated in Lawrence, discrimination will continue to be perceived as an acceptable way of life. "Those who oppose [us] have every right to protest, but we, too, have every constitutional right to gather publicly," says Kenney. "I never thought this much hate still existed. Unfortunately, getting permission to hold a parade doesn't change that."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.