Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Togetherness lacking at Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast
This year’s Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Fort Lauderdale was built around the theme “Together.” But the annual prayer gathering proved to be the most divisive in years.
As Mayor Jack Seiler and a lineup of national personalities spoke Friday morning about unity, tolerance and civility, dozens of protesters crowded a corner nearby, and one heckler, a gay man with one of his adopted sons, was escorted from the breakfast.
The 55th annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast drew more than 1,000 people from the business, political, social service and faith-based worlds.
Not since 2008 has it been protested. That year, just as this year, the lineup featured speaker Jim Daly, president and radio show host for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization.
Daly struck an apologetic tone Friday, hitting the issue head-on, and saying Christians had done a horrible job with the LGBT community.
“I need to apologize to people who disagree with me and say we have not handled that well,” he said.
After a heckler began chanting about homophobia, he urged a more peaceful coexistence.
“We’re all made in the image of God and God loves each and every one of us,” Daly said.
But on the protest corner, LGBT residents and straight ones as well had not forgotten some of Daly’s past comments they thought expressed hatred for gay people.
Focus on the Family is known for its work to convert gay people to straight, and to oppose same-sex marriage and adoption by same sex couples.
The organization also works to repair broken marriages and help parents raise their children.
“We live in a neighborhood that is half hetero, half straight,” John Gilson said from his protest perch near the Broward County Convention Center, where the breakfast was held. “We love our neighbors.”
He held a sign that said “Is hate your Christian value?” His girlfriend, Rita Cassady, held a sign that said “Love always wins.”
Cassady said they consider Focus on the Family “a terrorist group” for attempting to “pray away the gay.”
Daly, Gilson said, is a “despicable human being.”
Activist Michael Rajner, one of Seiler’s loudest critics on the issue, estimated 60 protesters participated Friday.
Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Dean Trantalis boycotted the breakfast, saying Focus on the Family’s views are “too extreme” and he didn’t want to appear to condone them by attending.
Seiler, who is Catholic, sidestepped the controversy Friday.
In his remarks, Seiler only obliquely referenced the stir, and spoke of what could be accomplished if people of different religions, colors and neighborhoods “stop yelling and start listening … stop protesting and start praying …. stop judging and start understanding … stop just reading the Bible and start living the Bible.”