The Flathead’s self-appointed guardians of public morality are not happy. On 20 June, Montana Pride will march up Main Street in Kalispell, showing the gay flag — a flag that Barry Brubaker and friends do not want flown in the Flathead. Last week, he presented Kalispell’s city council with a petition demanding the revocation of Montana Pride’s parade permit, arguing that the march would “…further erode morality and set precedence for future lasciviousness and lewd displays that other communities have experienced.” Ten days ago, the petition had approximately 200 signatures.
Brubaker would have a better chance of disrupting the parade by praying for rain. The parade permit is in order and won’t be revoked, the parade will go forward as planned, and the local constabulary will line the street with uniformed officers in a show of force designed to deter violence, which Montana Pride fears (see the note on MP’s website), not without justification.
But I would be surprised if anything more serious than a cream pie in the face occurs. This is largely street theatre, both for the marchers and for Brubaker and his buddies. Most of the conflict is occurring in the comment sections of the stories in the Flathead Beacon, the Daily InterLake, and the Missoulian, with literally hundreds of posts of varying quality (I’m being charitable here) on both sides of the issue, most by writers afraid to use their real names.
Montana Pride undoubtedly considers its march as an analogue of the civil rights marches in the south in the nineteen-sixties. This march will be legal, and thus not non-violent civil disobedience, but like the civil rights protesters who marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the men and women who will march in the 20 June parade in Kalispell will deliberately enter hostile territory to confront their critics and shout to the world that they will be neither intimidated nor deterred from their pursuit of their political agenda. That’s their right, and it’s a credit to Kalispell’s government that the police force will be protecting the protesters — upholding the constitutional rights of us all — instead of bashing them with billy clubs.
What Brubaker and his followers hope to accomplish is less clear. In his fine report in yesterday’s Missoulian, Michael Jamison wrote:
When Barry Brubaker stepped before the Kalispell City Council, trying to stop a gay pride parade, he said God had sent him as a spokesman for “the one truth.”
“I felt led by the Lord to start this petition,” he said, in the days after the meeting. “I’m just doing what the Lord put it in my heart to do. Because homosexuality is an abomination, and a sin.”
I don’t doubt Brubaker’s sincerity, but sincerity does not mitigate zealotry. It only makes it more dangerous, especially when the zealot believes he’s God’s instrument on Earth. Had Brubaker been born in Afghanistan, I suspect he would have wholeheartedly embraced the absolutism of the Taliban. He certainly shares the Taliban’s lack of confidence in the good judgment and commonsense of their fellow citizens. If he had as much faith in his community as he does in his god, he would not fear the consequences of exposing Kalispellians to the sight of gay activists and their allies marching up Main Street in broad daylight.
The opponents of the march remind me of the folks behind the periodic outbreaks of anti-pornography campaigns that afflict the Flathead. Citing scripture, displaying a piety that would shame the Pope, they sally forth from their places of worship to protect the weakers members of their community from exposure to the visual and verbal evils to which they consider themselves immune.
Pornography, of course, is still with us, sales of it likely go up during and after the campaigns (I’m sure some is purchased by the righteous to obtain and inspect proof of the abominations from which they would rescue their fellow citizens), and life pretty much goes on as usual. After establishing its superior virtue, the morals militia folds its tent and seeks forgiveness for examining the smut.
Such will be the case after the gay march in Kalispell.