Pride flag complaint against judge renewed
It has been almost four years since Judge Rosie Speedlin González of County Court-atlaw No. 13 displayed a Pride flag in her courtroom.
She won’t fly its rainbow colors in that space, not even during Pride Month, which began Thursday and runs through June 30.
Speedlin González will be in the thick of it, especially for one of Pride Month’s most spectacular events: Its June 24 parade along the gay strip in the heart of that community’s commercial corridor and near several LGBTQ nonprofit groups and agencies.
She’ll be aboard a lowrider, waving to San Antonians who live in a place she calls a “blue bubble,” where LGBTQ people are more comfortable being their authentic selves and visible largely without fear.
It should be a time to celebrate the nation’s advances in acceptance and in securing their rights, none more notable than marriage equality.
It’s also a good time to update the case against her Pride flag and what it unfurled beginning in 2019, especially because this bigoted, homophobic episode just won’t end.
Speedlin González thought it was over early this year, when a Special Review Committee made up of three appellate judges overruled the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct’s disciplinary actions against her. Her appeal found her “not guilty of all charges.”
San Antonio attorney Flavio Hernandez initiated the case by filing a complaint with the commission that boiled down to this: He found the Pride flag in her courtroom offensive.
In May, he refiled his grievance and the complaint sounds worse. It refers to Speedlin González’s “sodomite flag.”
“The judge continues to maintain her sodomite flag on courthouse property against the findings of the Special Review Committee.”
To best understand the nuisance case against the judge, it’s important to know what she brings to the bench.
In 2019, Speedlin González became the first openly gay Latina judge in Bexar County history. Her domestic abuse docket is one of two misdemeanor courts that focus on family violence.
She has become a leader in the field.
But the judge has been leading for a long time, dating back to high school where she served as president of her class for three of four years.
In her first year of college, she served as student government president at Norwich University, in Northfield, Vermont, the oldest private military academy in the country.
After she got sick her sophomore year and took a semester off, her parents insisted she enroll at a school closer to home.
She ended up at St. Mary’s University and studied political science, serving as an intern at City Hall “a buena hora,” good timing.
Henry Cisneros was mayor. Rosie Castro, who then worked for the city, coordinated interns and placed the future judge in the office of Councilwoman María Antonietta Berriozábal, the first Mexican American woman elected to council.
Speedlin González went on to graduate from law school in 2001, but it took about 11 years to get there.
In the intervening years, she worked at various jobs that put her in the radius of people in need of psychiatric care, in trouble with the law and at risk of everything, including addiction and domestic violence.
Strong and strong-willed, she concedes to being a rebel. She rides motorcycles, sports tattoos, colorful, manicured nails and can strike a powerful pose alongside her wife, Stacy Speedlin González, a therapist, educator and researcher.
The judge isn’t easily rattled, even by an anti-gay attorney who labels her and her life “immoral.”
He’s part of a national affliction.
Around the country, homophobic agendas haven’t let up, targeting transgender youth especially. In Texas, at least 140 ANTI-LGBTQ bills were filed this legislative session. They all seek to infringe on LGBTQ rights.
Earlier this year, Speedlin González says Hernandez reappeared, “filing nine motions to recuse me,” arguing his clients wouldn’t get a fair hearing in County Court-of-law No. 13.
A visiting judge denied his motions last month.
Meanwhile, the Commission for Judicial Conduct has yet to reach out.
“I haven’t heard from them,” she said.
Two flags remain in Speedlin González’s courtroom, the U.S. and Texas flags. Her Pride flag sits at the entrance to her chambers.
When asked about the status of LGBTQ progress, she said, “It depends on who you ask. I think we’re in a better place.
“If you talk to people of my generation, things were said and done to us in much more profound ways than our youth today.”
The backlash to marriage equality and other LGBTQ issues will push on despite Pride Month.
But there’s so much history for which to be grateful and so much more yet to celebrate, including a parade that may outshine any of Fiesta’s.
It won’t just be the lights, music and movement, but the colors — all that adorn the Pride flag.