THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER IN A BROKEN CITY.
FROM... The San Diego Union-Tribune, October 16, 2010: An appellate court panel of three justices has unanimously upheld last year’s jury verdict awarding damages to four San Diego firefighters who sued the city because they had been required to participte in the 2007 gay pride parade in Hillcrest.
The verdict was appealed by the city of San Diego and just one week after oral arguments were heard before the Fourth District Court of Appeal, a ruling was issued on Thursday.

The 2009 jury found the firefighters were sexually harassed by some parade participants and spectators and awarded them a total of $34,300 plus more than a half-million dollars in legal fees. The firefighters, John Ghiotto, Chad Allison, Jason Hewitt and Alexander Kane, had always maintained money was not the issue and that they had sued because they felt it was wrong to have been forced by their superiors to take part in the parade.
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Of course, the U-T’’s report that the “Verdict on Pride Parade Firefighters” was upheld had no journalistic reason for noting the verdict came in a month when the nation’s focus is on bullying and harassment of children and adolescents that causes many of them to kill themselves. I find it hard to be sympathetic to John Ghiotto, Chad Allison, Jason Hewitt and Alexander Kane for their trying day riding in the big red city fire truck through San Diego Streets filled with joyful people celebrating freedom. Oh, I almost forgot. There was that very small cluster of unhappy participants in front of the fire station on University Avenue...the folks who were loudly proclaiming that gays are going to hell and implying that the rest of us who march and celebrate with them are in danger, too. Most of the young people of San Diego get it. They understand that being gay is simply one of the many possibilities when one is born into the human race, like being left-handed or blue-eyed. A few young people learn too soon that their sexual orientation is unacceptable to their parents and their churches and to heroes like these four brave firemen; and not having the sophistication and easy recourse to the courts that our offended grown-up firemen have, they decide to hurt themselves when the teasing, bullying, and assaults become too much to bear.