Four firemen from San Diego have emerged victorious from a dispute over a homosexual pride parade after the California Supreme Court upheld an earlier decision ruling in their favour.
The firemen had been forced to participate in a homosexual pride parade in July 2007 under threat of suspension if they failed to participate. They were forced to ride their fire engine through the public parade and the men endured verbal abuse and overtly sexual gestures from the crowd.
The four men of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department filed a claim of sexual harassment against the city of San Diego.
Fire Capt. John Ghiotto, who led the men during the lawsuit, said that had the men refused they would have risked being penalised.
“You could not even look at the crowd without getting some type of sexual gesture,” stated the original complaint, which noted that Christian protesters reviled them for joining the parade. Had the men refused, Ghiotto noted, the men risked being immediately suspended and stripped of any chance of promotion.
“As a supervisor I felt disgusted and embarrassed, that I had to subject my crew to this type of behaviour.”
An initial trial ended in a hung jury in September 2008, before a jury sided with the firemen the following February. After the San Diego attorney’s office appealed, the firemen won again in October of last year, when the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District issued a ruling strongly in their favour.
Charles LiMandri, the general counsel for the California branch of the National Organization for Marriage who represented the firemen, said:
“It’s an important case because it shows that if Christian or people of faith generally are willing to stand up for their religious beliefs, and refuse to be bullied by secular agendas, that they do have rights that can and should be enforced in court,” said LiMandri. “In this case those rights were upheld.”
LiMandri said that it also “sends a strong message to people about what these gay pride parades are really like.”
Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of the Christian Legal Centre, commented:
“I am pleased that these men won their case. Unfortunately this story reveals the truth about the age in which we live and the power that the homosexual rights lobby holds over public bodies across the West. Not content with their freedom to practice homosexuality under the law, many homosexual rights activists actually want to impose their sexual ideology on everybody else and force us to agree with their behaviour, whether we want to or not.”