Homosexual Justice Department employees can hold their annual “gay pride” event at the department’s headquarters after all, but not on the government’s dime.
The Associated Press reports department officials said yesterday they never intended to flatly bar the DOJ Pride group from holding its awards ceremony on June 18 in the agency’s Great Hall.
“They will not be officially sponsored this year,” spokesman Mark Corallo told the AP. “They took that to mean they couldn’t have the event.”
WorldNetDaily reported Saturday that Melissa Schraibman, a homosexual who works in the agency’s tax division, announced DOJ had barred the group from holding its event.
Attorney General John Ashcroft “will not allow us to hold our annual pride ceremony in the building,” Schraibman told Agence France-Presse.
Her announcement sparked outrage.
Homosexual activists say “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month” takes place in June to remember the “Stonewall Riots,” June 27, 1969, which they count as the beginning of the “gay liberation” movement. On that night, homosexuals at a bar called the Stonewall Inn resisted a raid by New York City police. In 1999, President Clinton officially named June as “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.”
The Justice Department has held such events annually since the early 1990s when Janet Reno was attorney general under the Clinton administration.
Under the Bush administration, Corallo told the AP, DOJ Pride had been the only employee organization that was given official sponsorship. The withdrawal of sponsorship addressed concern over granting special benefits to one organization.
While the department dismissed the incident as a miscommunication, homosexual activists perceived the government as backing down on its “outright denial,” according to the AP.
David Smith, spokesman for Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual-rights group in Washington, told the newswire that withdrawal of sponsorship still amounts to a slap in the face.
“Sponsorship sends an important message to the employee group that their work is valued,” the AP quotes Smith as saying.
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