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Preachers Free to Share Gospel at 'Gay Pride' Event
Harrisburg, PA, Threatened With Lawsuit for Pattern of Silencing Street Evangelists
By Allie Martin and Jody Brown
August 1, 2002

(AgapePress) - Street preachers in one Pennsylvania city are able to proclaim the gospel for the first time in years without the threat of arrest.

The homosexual community in Harrisburg sponsors several events during the year, the main one being the summer "gay pride" gala. But while that community gathered at Riverfront Park, celebrating freedom by proclaiming their preferences and allegiances, evangelists who responded with raised voices and scripture reading were arrested at the request of homosexual revelers. Each year had resulted in constitutionally questionable arrests, many of which ended in acquittals or in charges being dismissed.

B.J. Brown, an attorney with the Center for Law & Policy -- the legal arm of the American Family Association -- says Harrisburg's police department had established a pattern of silencing the street preachers by using ambiguously worded ordinances and unconstitutional orders. One street evangelist had described Harrisburg as a "stronghold against the preaching of the gospel on the streets."

But this weekend, Brown says, the street preachers were free from the threat of jail.

"We worked with Clymer and Musser [a law firm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania], put together the briefing, and dropped it on the city, suing the city for this pattern and practice," Brown explains. He says when he and his clients moved for a temporary restraining order, the city came forward and suggested they just come up with a stipulation.

The result, Brown says, is an agreement that granted the street preachers better, arrest-free access to the 2002 "gay pride" event than ever before. He says the decision is a major victory.

"The bottom line is, if the city is going to allow the homosexuals to parade openly downtown and proclaim with great verve their allegiances, their proclivities, [and] their preferences, [the city is] going to have to allow the street preachers to be out there proclaiming the Word of God," Brown says.

The pro-family attorney says many cities across the nation are so afraid of the homosexual lobby that they will think of nothing of trampling the constitutional rights of Christians.

© 2002 AgapePress all rights reserved.