Bible-Thumpers Arrested at Loring Park Pride Festival
July 1, 2009 by James Hipps · 1 Comment
According to a post on PrisonPlanet.com:
Brian and Doris Johnson have passed out free Bibles at the Twin Cities Pride Festival for 11 years, but this year their free gifts got them arrested. After being told they couldn’t have a booth at this year’s festival, the family came anyway and ended up behind bars for trespassing.
The Pride Festival started Saturday in Loring Park and is considered the third-largest GLBT celebration in the nation. Since the festival rented out the entire park, police said they could choose which vendors to allow in the park.
The Johnsons are born-again Christians and believe homosexuality is a sin. Pride organizers said their booth with “signs about Jesus, models of fetuses and stack of bibles” caused discussions that offended some participants. Organizers were concerned about letting a vendor discriminate against the GLBT community at their own event.
I know this is going to kick up some dust with the Religious Right as they already claim hate-crimes legislation will prevent them from preaching against homosexuality, however, that is a lie, and the truth is these people were trespassing. Their arrest is no different from someone else breaking into your house. If you have paid for a venue, then for that period, the venue is, by law, private property for the lessee. Sorry, guys…I don’t think you’d find LGBT people distributing copies of The Advocate at your church!
