An article by reporter Rachel Ralston in this week’s issue was supposed to be one of those heartwarming reports about a Good Thing that happened in the community last week, a standard wrap-up of a worthwhile event. Instead, it became another kind of report that frequently appears on our news pages – the kind that, instead of warming the heart, increases the heart rate and makes us, sitting calmly (to all appearances) at our desks here at the Times, feel suddenly like we can’t get enough air. (It’s not the high summer temperatures – we have an overzealous air conditioner – it’s the suffocating feeling of organized intolerance).

This week’s heart-stopping story in question was a wrap-up of LGBT Youth Pride, which took place last weekend at The Center. A good time was had by all – there was music, community, food, a parade, dancing and great, inspirational speeches by people like author and national activist Leslie Feinberg.

But the stressful part of the story began with a little sentence that acknowledged the rather sinister, quiet presence of members of the women’s organization Concerned Women for America – and by the Tuesday morning following Youth Pride, that sentence had turned into a string of paragraphs documenting the involvement and insertion of CWA activists and other local protestors into our community’s Youth Pride celebrations.

It’s a story that has a pretty good ending – but only just, and we want to elaborate a little on what went on behind the scenes.

Concerned Women for America, which according to Pride organizers had a fairly quiet, unobtrusive presence, calls itself the largest women’s public policy organization in the country. With between 500,000 and 600,000 members, the group rivals the National Organization for Women with its membership, and operates on a reported budget of around $12 million. CWA actually was founded in San Diego by Beverly LaHaye, who is best known as the (presumably obedient) wife of Tim LaHaye, author of the dreadful apocalyptic Left Behind series, and co-founder of the Moral Majority. CWA has protested the National Day of Silence at schools, same-sex marriage, abortion rights and pretty much any progressive, inclusive policy or legislation that gets on the map nationally – and locally the group has protested recent legal rulings against the Boy Scouts and the San Diego Zoo’s gay circuit parties. Last week, the CWA had a problem with members of a Carlsbad High School dance troupe performing at Youth Pride – but apparently their problems didn’t get very far when the principal confirmed that the parents of the students involved had given full consent to the performance and many had attended the festival, no big surprise. (Most parents are by nature reasonable and inclusive of all children, at least we’d like to think.)

Get the picture?

If any of this bothers you, go to our website at www.gaylesbiantimes.com, click on this article and link to the websites of resources like NOW (CWA’s rival, with 500,000 members and easily the largest feminist organization in the country), which is still riding high from their inspiring March for Women’s Lives event in Washington D.C., April 25. Perhaps the best thing we can do to celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday, May 9, is to register our reasoned, inclusive voices with NOW or their new “10 for change” voter registration program.

Back to our story – the scary part came with last Tuesday’s San Diego City Council meeting, where a regular homophobic activist, James Hartline, was joined by a San Diego News Notes reporter, Allyson Smith, who had attended the Youth Pride event, in protesting that the city was “corrupting children” by giving a resolution celebrating LGBT Youth Pride.

This is when the heart rate starts going – when individuals stand before our city council, and when parents go before schools, openly speaking out in favor of intolerance and discrimination, and doing so in the name of youth.

Fortunately, our community has people like Delores Jacobs and AJ Davis at The Center, Marci Bair with Family Matters, and San Diego LGBT Pride Executive Director Suanne Pauley, among others, who can show up at the same city council meeting and speak eloquently in favor of equality, openness and education for our children. And most importantly, we have people sitting on the other side of the table, among them Deputy Mayor Toni Atkins, who can say (probably in spite of an increasing heart rate), “I think it’s easy to see today why I continue to be so proud of my community.”

The bad news is that this even had to be an issue at our city council, which was forced to take a vote on whether or not they should reaffirm the city’s official recognition of LGBT Youth Pride through a council resolution. The council did it, unanimously, in a 7-0 vote.

That, of course, was the good news.