Driving home just now, I heard a fair portion of an interview with Eric Moutsos, the former Salt Lake City police officer whose attempt to avoid an assignment connected with last summer’s Gay Pride Parade has now reached the national and international news.
He was a very articulate and persuasive interview.
Based on the little that I’ve now heard and read about this story, which I haven’t previously followed, it seems to me that Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank handled this matter very poorly and unjustly.
It’s one thing for a police officer to be asked to protect a parade or a demonstration. That I entirely understand and endorse, and an officer shouldn’t be permitted to pick and choose which assignments to protect legal public events he or she will be willing to accept. Officer Moutsos fully agrees; he has, in fact, protected homosexuality-related events in the past, and was willing to do traffic control and the like for this event, as well.
But Officer Moutsos was, effectively, being asked to participate in the parade, to be part of the day’s celebration and entertainment — and, if that’s accurate, it seems to me flagrantly inappropriate. As it would have been inappropriate had he been required to perform similar maneuvers during a hypothetical 2012 parade for Candidate Mitt Romney or in connection with some uniquely Mormon event.
The Eric Moutsos case appears to be yet another example of ideologically-motivated encroachment on freedom in the United States.
Perhaps there’s another side to this matter. But, at this point, I think that Chief Burbank ought to issue a formal public apology, if indeed he ought not to consider resignation.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In