During last night’s Atascadero city council meeting, several members of the public spoke about an upcoming pride event in Atascadero’s zoo garden event center on Sunday, June 16th, as well as a proclamation for pride month by mayor pro tem Funk. Several speakers spoke against the pride month event, and the possibility of declaring June as pride month.
Other speakers gave comments in favor of the event. One speaker, a 14-year-old, gave their personal experience of wearing a pride flag cape to school during the month of June. She said she was “called a fa**ot and a d*ke” many times at school, and was “told to kill [herself].”
Two additional online speakers made comments against Susan Funk’s proclamation and the celebration in Atascadero. Both would make allusions to white pride in their comments. One said to “advocate for the city to name June as white pride month.” He also said: “homosexuals… you’re not even people. Buy a rope.” The latter said “if you’re going to be a fa**ot, you’re going to be called a fa**ot and told to kill yourself.” His public comment was cut off before his time was up after he said “you’re a normal human being as long as you’re white,” and “I want this nation to go back to being white.”
The city’s attorney explained that while public comments were allowed to discuss their opinions of pride month and the event, the previous comments of white pride were not protected by the Brown Act because it was not directly responsive to what was being discussed, and was not something council has jurisdiction over.
The city’s attorney further said that the pseudonym by one of these online callers, “Will Lampshade” was likely a reference to a popular culture belief that concentration camps would craft lampshades from human skin.
