More than 3,500 people have joined a
Facebook page calling for a boycott of this year's annual Rose Parade
over a planned gay wedding.
Danny Leclair, 45, and Aubrey Loots,
42, of Los Angeles plan to marry aboard a float sponsored by the AIDS
Healthcare Foundation (AHF). The wedding will mark the parade's
first same-sex marriage in its 125 year history. However, the
parade's first live wedding took place in 1989.
While organizer Karen Grube of San
Diego told conservative site Breitbart.com
that she would oppose the inclusion of any marriage in the annual
parade, she described the upcoming wedding on Facebook as a
“disgusting exhibition.”
“The Rose Parade shouldn't be used by
gay activists to promote the gay agenda, and a rose parade float is
no place to flagrantly display a gay wedding,” she
wrote. “But I guess they think they can pervert this year's
theme 'Dreams Come True,' to allow this disgusting exhibition. Tell
them NO! Tell their sponsors NO. Tell them you will boycott the
parade by not watching or attending, and that you will NEVER watch or
be part of it again.”
Rose Parade officials, though, praised
the AHF's float: “Like all of our sponsors and float designers, AHF
continues to help make the Rose Parade a premier event through
original and creative expressions that connect to parade themes –
as this float does.”
According to the Pasadena
Star News, Leclair and Loots will exchange vows atop a
wedding cake-shaped float “decorated in white coconut chips and
maroon-colored kidney beans with white roses and dendrobium orchids”
and bearing the group's theme of “Love is the Best Protection.”