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Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on March 10, 2002

I had to address this when I saw it on Friday night's "O'Reilly Factor." It turns out some firefighters in Providence, R.I., were ordered to march in a Gay Pride parade as part of their duties. Several refused and a lawsuit against the city is in the works.

Wayne Besen from the Human Rights Campaign thinks that the firefighters should be required to go to the parade, because they go to all of the others. "The city believes that it's important for firefighters to do outreach. And one great way to do that is to go to these parades. It's not really about outreach, it's about the fire department doing outreach to communities."

A civil liberties attorney that O'Reilly had on attacked the logic that if the city sent the fire department to one parade, it had to send them to all of them. The lawyer, challenged Besen to follow the line of logic to its ridiculous conclusion; would the city also have to send the firefighters to racist parades, like those organized by Farrakhan.

Besen gladly followed the argument down the road to its ludicrous conclusion. If the KKK wants the fire department to be in their "parade" the city has to do it. Otherwise it would be communicating to racists, that the fire department doesn't "support" them.

Someone fell out of the stupid tree -- and hit every branch on the way down.

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