So it's been an interesting few days for us in the Birmingham gay community and for me being on the Board of Directors for Central Alabama Pride, Inc.

Let me start off with this:  The opinions posted in MY blog are those of Mark (590) Cummings and not of any business or organization I am affiliated with.  That being said... here we go.

I remember back in October of 2007 posting a blog about the Mayoral election in Birmingham and how, even though I wasn't a resident of the City at that time, it would affect me.  Man oh man, was I EVER right.  Larry Langford can certainly not be accused of being complacent in his office.  And as Forrest would say... that's all I have to say about THAT (right now).


On Wednesday, May 21 The Pride Board received an email stating that Mayor Langford had denied our request for a Mayoral Proclamation and hanging of Pride flags this year. 

Now a little history lesson.:  On May 5th, I contacted the Mayor's Office of Public Information to request the Proclamation.  Just as in year's past, this office simply took the Proclamation from the previous year, updated the dates and the current Mayor has signed it.  I talked with this office several times over the course of the next 2 weeks, always being assured it was being handled.  Then comes the bombshell on May 21.

The Board of Directors decided at a special meeting Wednesday that we wouldn't make an official statement about this denial until we had our parade permit IN HAND. (just in case)  The Board went through the appropriate channels to attain our permit, just like in year's past.  The Traffic and Engineering Departments were those we were dealing with.  Our Board did not contact the Mayor's office for the parade permit.

Johnathan Quinn, President of Central Alabama Pride, Inc was contacted at 7pm on Friday night by a reporter from the Birmingham News with the facts from his article that was published the next morning.  We tried contacting the Mayor's Office, but noone was available to give us official information on the situation.  The newspaper article ran on Saturday morning and a statement was posted on Pride's myspace and website from the Board of Directors.

Johnathan Quinn was interviewed by all four of the local news stations on Saturday evening for comment on this situation as was Mayor Langford.  Mayor Langford said this was just a *publicity stunt* by our organization to get publicity for our event. 

Mayor Langford, we do not NEED your publicity for our event.  We simply wanted you  to proclaim a week of celebration for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities of Birmingham just like your predecesors have done.  Your comments in the press that "city government isn't in the business of condoning personal lifestyle CHOICES of it's citizens" is an absolute slap in the face to me personally:  a law abiding, tax paying, hard working, home owning VOTER in the City of Birmingham.  Me being gay is not a choice.  It's who I am and for 10 days of the year, the Central Alabama GLBT community comes together for a celebration of who we ARE, not who we CHOOSE to be.  We celebrate diversity and accomplishments of not only our current community, but those who have worked for year's for Equal (not special) rights under the law.  Your refusal does only ONE thing to our community, it brings us together in ways you've never fathomed.  Our community is stronger for this.  We've seen over the past 5 days support come out of the woodwork for our celebration and this year, our 30th anniversary, will have the largest number of participants and attendees we've ever seen in our history.

Central Alabama GLBT community, if there's EVER been a time for you to show your Pride, this is the time.  The 20th Pride Parade will be held on June 7th, beginning at 8:30pm through 5 points South.  I personally would like to see all of our community, as well as those who support our community, participating in the parade.  The time to stand by and watch is past.  It's time to participate and be a part of what I believe will go down as a historical parade for us.  I don't want this to be a riot or a march -- this isn't about HIM --- it's about US.  We will peacefully parade down 20th street and show Birmingham that we're not afraid of who we are.

I think it VERY ironic and appropriate that all this happened this year with our 2008 theme is "Pride 365: Building a Stronger Community" and  our headliner is Pepper Mashay.  One of her songs is "I've got My Pride" (and noone's gonna take it away).  Pepper is a HUGE supporter of our community and we will show her a great welcome to Birmingham!!


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE....

Check out the Pride myspace and website www.centralalabamapride.org for all the events coming over the next 2 weeks.  It's going to be a GREAT time for our community and you don't want to miss any part of it.

Thanks for all each of you have done in the past and here's to a FANTASTIC and HISTORIC Pride!