Christian group pickets black queer film festival in San Diego

About 30 people protested outside the Malcolm X public library in San Diego on Saturday in response to a black gay film festival going on inside, reports The San Diego Union-Tribune. The third annual Ebony Pride Film Festival, which featured films that addressed issues regarding lesbian and transgender issues as well as HIV/AIDS and its effect on black gay men, drew criticism from protesters, most of them from St. Stephen's Cathedral Church of God in Christ. "We just feel it's not an appropriate message to be glorifying," James Hartline, a Christian activist and self-described "former homosexual," told the paper. Karen Posey of San Diego, who attended the festival, said she wished the Christian protesters could take a page from her fellow Buddhists: "We don't go around trying to fix people." Ebony Pride San Diego cochair Kenneth J. Riley disputed assertions that the event was anti-Christian, saying, "We are children of God too. Not one of them can tell me I'm not a Christian." While some protesters voiced complaints that the event was held in a public library, supervising librarian Deborah Graf noted, "Everyone in the community has a right to make use of it."