Town official faces calls for resignation after proclaiming July 'straight pride' month

A California vice-mayor’s declaration that July should be “straight pride” month has resulted in calls for his resignation or recall and threats of a demonstration at the next city council meeting.

Ted Hickman, the vice mayor of Dixon, California, noted in his “That’s Life” column in Dixon’s Independent Voice at the end of June that “last Sunday ended LGBTQF-WTF month … with tens of thousands of folks dancing and prancing all over American celebrating the fact they are different than most of the rest of us and showing their ‘pride’ in being so.”

With his tongue perhaps somewhat in his cheek, Mr. Hickman reminded readers that “last week I proclaimed the Month of July as SPAM … (Straight Pride American Month… as Vice Mayor don’t know if I can, but what the heck).”

“Now hundreds of millions of the rest of us can celebrate our month, peaking on July 4th, as healthy, heterosexual, fairly monogamous, keep our kinky stuff to ourselves, Americans,” he wrote in the community paper for the town just west of Sacramento.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he cautioned in his column. “I support the First Amendment, as much as the next person, and support the rights of grown men to wear skin tight short-shorts and go-go boots and don tinker bell wings with wand and prance down the streets of San Francisco.”

His column, which also is available on his personal blog, also referred to “the tinker bells” and “dressing up like fairies.”

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