Texas Politician Targets LGBT Community with Anti-Gay Flier

Failed Dallas City Council candidate and notorious anti-gay gadfly Richard Sheridan, who is best known locally for being removed physically from numerous public meetings made headlines this week for attacking a local magazine reporter in a profanity laden voicemail berating the writer for not pointing out in an election preview piece that an opposing candidate was gay.

But as Rudolph Bush of the Dallas Morning News, reports in a blog post dated May 15, Sheridan, who has a long history of spewing homophobic rhetoric, did something at the City Council today that, "might have consequences."

According to Bush's report, Sheridan began passing out fliers during a City Council meeting that displayed a distortion of a recent Dallas Voice front page showing the faces of three openly gay council candidates, Vernon Franko, Leland Burk and Herschel Weisfeld, all of whom lost bids in a recent City Council election, with X'd through each of their faces, scrawled 6s on their foreheads and "God's voice was heard in Dallas Saturday. No openly gay LGBT City Councilmember!!" written in his own hand.

Bush goes on to mention in his blog post that "Sheridan failed to write that his own bid for council came up a little short too. In fact, he managed to get 28 votes in District 13. That's 28 votes out of 10,350 votes cast in the district."

City Council member Craig Holcomb addressed the issue of the flyer, stating "If I were quiet, that would be wrong. It allows that kind of thought to flourish. It allows the person to think that is acceptable thought, and it is not acceptable." A number of council members spoke back, including council member Dwaine Caraway, who called for the council to review speaker guidelines to address abusive speakers.

"That has been a thorny issue before. There is a fine line between abusive speech and speech that politicians don't want to hear," Bush writes. "But Caraway said serial abusers, like Sheridan, must not be given a forum week after week to spread hatred. He said he will shortly ask the council to consider permitting speakers to address the council just once a month. Special exceptions, he said, can be made for people with multiple issues before the council," he added.