Bad city choice for HRC Carolinas dinner

We were at the NC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival today and I ran into the wonderful John Short, coordinator of the upcoming NC Pride festival (which is on September 30 this year with the theme "Pride, Not Prejudices.")

In the film fest guide there is an ad for the 2007 HRC Carolinas annual dinner; it's going to be held again in Charlotte. We were discussing how this is an unfortunate decision, given how the organization was treated last year by Mayor Pat McCrory, who refused to provide a letter of welcome from the mayor's office, something usually done for large conventions or events that are bringing dollars to the city.

Over 1300 HRC members came to Charlotte last time around, representing the third largest event in the country by the organization that year, and attendees and the organization spent plenty of gay dollars there. While HRC couldn't do anything about last year's event, certainly someone would have thought that holding another annual dinner elsewhere would have been an appropriate response to the snub. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised at HRC's decision; look at the feeble reaction last year after the slap in the face by McCrory.

The event marked the group's first trip to the area, but members say they did not receive the warm welcome they were looking for.

"You can welcome and embrace someone and you don't have to see eye to eye on all the issues," said HRC member Joni Madison.

Charlotte lawyer Phil Wells says he requested a letter of welcome from the mayor's office - a common occurrence for convention attendees. Wells was hoping Mayor McCrory would write a couple welcoming sentiments. He was disappointed by the lack of response.

"Here were a great number of people coming into this great city and spending money and wanting to see the best side of charlotte, and all he had to do was say, 'Welcome to our great city and he missed that opportunity,'" Wells said. Others attending the weekend festivities felt the same way.

"I just think that it was a kind of a courtesy, a protocol, and the fact that he didn't extend a hand, it was a missed opportunity for him," Madison said. "I think he's pandering to what he thinks his constituents believe and it's shameful," Mitchell Gold said.

Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon says the mayor's office gets approximately 200 requests for welcoming letters every year. McCrory did not comment on the issue.

Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, while the largest city in the state, and home to a sizeable gay population, it is at its core, more socially conservative than, for instance, the Triangle area. This is the same county with a district that keeps sending wild-eyed, anally fixated bigot Bill James back to his county commission seat unopposed. The county finally managed to squeak through a vote to add sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy last year, but not without a huge blow up and campaign by the fundies.

The annual Pride event in Charlotte has been dealing with controversy and adversity for some time, with fundamentalist bigot Flip Benham of Operation Save America trying to shut down events (this year's Charlotte Pride will take place on Aug. 26). Last year, the fundamentalist group called for the police working the Pride event who wore rainbow pins to be reprimanded for this simple act of freedom of speech. According to Q-Notes, which covered Charlotte Pride in 2004, OSA members went in and out of the crowd "harassing LGBT festival-goers by videotaping them, and asking them about their sexuality and suggesting they should consider changing their orientation."

And they had a friend in McCrory, who didn't want to grant permission for Pride events in public areas.

McCrory said he believes Charlotte Pride isn't appropriate for a public place. He said he's talked to lawyers about the legality of the festival, and has been told that it would be unconstitutional to deny organizers a permit based on what they might do. "I do not want that festival in a park setting," he said. "If they need to do it, I think it belongs in a hotel" or other private setting.

The park permit was finally obtained, but as you can see, it's a battle with wingnuts all the way.

With all that in mind, couldn't HRC Carolinas find a more accommodating city to host its dinner, one to hold up as a model of more progressive thinking about tolerance and civil equality to give its support and event dollars to?