Can Charlotte Pride parade exclude Gays for Trump float?
By Eugene Volokh June 8 at 2:50 PM
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{Brian Talbert, a member of “Gays for Trump”} ... is apparently raising money for “a lawsuit against Charlotte Pride for discrimination,” but that would not be money well spent. First, Charlotte and North Carolina do not ban discrimination by parade organizers based on political affiliation. Only a few jurisdictions include political affiliation on their lists of prohibited bases for discrimination.
Second, even if a public accommodation law did ban such discrimination, it couldn’t apply to parades organized by nongovernmental organizations. Such parade organizers have a First Amendment right to exclude groups from their parades based on the messages the groups convey about their members’ sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion, race and whatever else to make sure that a parade conveys just the speech that parade organizers want to convey. That’s what the Supreme Court held in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. (1995), when it said that the organizers of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade had a First Amendment right to exclude the gay/lesbian/bisexual group. And the same applies here.
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Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy. Follow @volokhc
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Albeit "gays for Trump" is almost oxymoronic, I tend to believe exclusion would not fit freedom of speech/expression that is and has been a freedom stance hallmark of "gay liberation" all along. I don't need to restate here the objections, Trump has flip-flopped around enough about the marriage issue depending on audience.
My own reaction to such a float would be noncommital. I wouldn't boo or clap, feeding into what any essentially publicity hungry group such as Westboro Baptists crave. Best to ignore the tantrums of a child till they stop on their own.
If the Orange one survives his own scandals with his presidency intact, I'd feel somewhat less personally threatened by Mike Pence's purposefully bigoted agenda.
Albeit more terrified for us all 
