Memo to the Rev. Grant Storms from the City of New Orleans:

Go away! Far away!

Labor day weekend is here and in New Orleans that means two things-- Southern Decadence and the annoyance that is the Rev. Grant Storms.

The article is quite short, so I will reproduce it here in its entirety:

A group of merchants on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street have won a
temporary restraining order against the Reverend Grant Storms and his posse of
Southern Decadence protesters.

Civil District Judge Michael Bagneris issued the order yesterday
barring Storms and his group from using megaphones during their protests and
directs them to abide by city noise ordinances.

Storms, a fundamentalist Christian, and others oppose the festival as
immoral. This week, Bishop Paul S. Morton of the Greater Saint Stephen Full
Gospel Baptist Church denounced the celebration of gay culture as -- quote -- an
abomination to God.

In arguing for the T-R-O, Earl Bernhardt, president of the Bourbon
Street Alliance, said the protesters use antics that drive away customers.
Bernhardt owns the Tropical Isle at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse streets.
He says Storms' sidewalk sermons last year drowned out the performers in his
club and disrupted his business.

Storms says the restraining order will not effect his protest
plans.

I was in New Orleans last year when this was all going on, and I think that the merchants have a point. Southern Decadence is a gay event for the most part, and Rev. Storms is a fundamental Christian who disapproves of the gay lifestyle. He takes a bullhorn and a video camera and uses them to tell revellers that their lifestyle is a sin. And he gains access to some businesses and tapes the goings on therein to use to prove his "point".

Let the gays have their fun, the "Good Reverand" should take his protest elsewhere, and the merchants make money. Then everyone is happy.

This'll be interesting. Too bad I'm not there now to see it.

--MorelaterZ--