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they wanted the public officeholders to come and support their application. I go. -- And Doug Ireland is there: the two leaders of the gay parade -- one a lesbian, a very powerful woman (laughs) -- I think she could break your arm if you shook hands with her. And the male head of the gay parade that year, a very difficult guy, very pedantic and hostile is the only way I can describe it -- I mean everybody was picking on him is the way he felt. He was awful. Made my job as a negotiator very difficult, because I became the chief negotiator for them.

All right. Weirin, who is the deputy commissioner -- he's looking around the room: he'd like to escape. And I say to him, “Now, look...” Oh, first we handle the police. Nice. I remember an inspector was there, and he said, “We want to be cooperative, but the fact is that the minister has an ordinance here which he's brought to our attention that you cannot form in front of a church.” I said, “That's a very reasonable ordinance. It says you can't form 200 yards in front, 200 yards in back -- whatever the actual footage was. I think that's reasonable. They should just be on either side of that, and they certainly should make certain that they don't engage in any noise and not be disruptive. But he doesn't have/the right to bar them from Christopher Street.”

“Well,” he says, “he has another ordinance here which says that you can't begin to parade on Sunday until one o'clock in