The Santa Cruz Pride committee made a bad decision in not allowing sheriff’s office a place in this year’s parade

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This year’s June 2 Pride parade in Santa Cruz was perhaps the largest and most diverse of any in the past 49 years both in terms of participants and the crowd on the sidewalks. It was great to be able to celebrate the successes of the movement both locally and nationally – especially in the context of depressing and scary news about Donald Trump’s presidential run and Gaza dominating everything these days.

For me, it was the first parade in which I was a participant after having been a volunteer in every parade since 1975. I connected with friends and had a great time, but the experience was marred by the news that the Pride committee had refused to allow a group from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office to participate in the march and to have a booth at the event.

I understand that there are people, both gay and straight, who are not fans of law enforcement, and who have experienced negative treatment in the past and even present; however, excluding law enforcement representation at this event is, in my opinion, a tragic missed opportunity.

I write as someone who has been active in the LGBTQ+ movement for decades. In the 1970s, I wrote and published (at my own expense) an eight-page pamphlet opposing the Briggs Initiative that sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers, staff and administrators from California public schools. On a friend’s offset press, I printed 400,000 copies of the pamphlet, which was distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. I spoke at several large rallies against the initiative, as well, as a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

As a five-time mayor and councilmember for the City of Santa Cruz, I often spoke at LBGTQ+ events, school classrooms, and at Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee meetings in Santa Cruz and San Jose. I have been a member and activist in the Diversity Center and the Cantu Center at UC Santa Cruz, and, as a faculty member at UCSC, I have academically sponsored scores of UCSC student interns at LGBTQ+ groups. 

So I am engaged on this issue of deputy sheriffs’ participation in Pride and feel I have to weigh in on it.

The sheriff’s department today is hugely different than the one we had in the past. In the 1970s, I was involved in anti-Vietnam war protests where deputy sheriffs in Santa Cruz beat demonstrators with clubs and sprayed us with pepper spray when we protested nonviolently and  were not resisting arrest. 

A former elected sheriff Al Noren began his first term in 1974 by creating our county’s first tactical squad and arming them with M16 automatic rifles. I once watched a practice training where deputies were shown how to clear an intersection of passive and nonviolent demonstrators by beating them with clubs and the use of pepper spray.

Until about two decades ago, openly gay, lesbian or bisexual applicants were not accepted by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, and gay or lesbian or bisexual deputies who were hired were often met with harassment by their fellow officers. Openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community members often faced hostile and degrading treatment by deputy sheriffs and worse.

But things have changed. 

I guess the Pride committee has forgotten, but the previous Santa Cruz County sheriff, Mark Tracy, rode his car in the Pride parade in at least one past year. Under our current sheriff, Jim Hart, the department mandates sexual harassment training related to LGBTQ+ issues and has policies against sexual harassment of LGBTQ+ deputies and the public.

I know there are openly LGBTQ+ deputies in our sheriff’s department. So I can only imagine what it is like to have the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association turned down when it asks to participate in an event celebrating the community and deputies among them. 

I think we owe them an open apology.

Lots of other organizations with embarrassing histories on LGBTQ+ issues now participate, including the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts (now renamed Scouting America) and many professional, educational and community service organizations. 

Do we want all of these organizations, including the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, to be neutral or even hostile to the idea of gay pride and fair and equal treatment of the LBGTQ+ community and its members? Or do we want to include them as allies in the still-ongoing struggle for freedom and equality based on sexual orientation? 

How do we imagine that the struggle for LGBTQ+ liberation will be won at the cultural level in addition to the legal level if it is not by the transformation of all of the governmental, educational, professional and community organizations into our allies and supporters? Isn’t that what the participation of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association in our celebration really signifies?

Particularly in this election year when Donald Trump and his militant right-wing and armed supporters are threatening violence at polling places and a violent response if he does not win the election (and perhaps even if he does), it is a good idea to embrace law enforcement officers who seek to demonstrate their support for Pride.

This goes beyond the simple and fair idea of being inclusionary – which if nothing else is the entire key to the LGBTQ+ struggle for recognition and equality. During these trying times, it would be nice for a change if law enforcement were on our side.

Refusing to allow the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association to participate in Pride was a real missed opportunity. Let’s not repeat it next year.