DELRAY BEACH — Eight years after the reign of a city manager who opposed partnership benefits for gay municipal workers and legal protection for gays, Delray Beach rolled out a rainbow carpet of welcome to residents and visitors.
More than 100 people gathered Saturday morning at the intersection of Northeast Second Avenue and Northeast First Street, newly painted with LGBTQ pride colors, to celebrate the community.
“The LGBTQ community in Delray Beach has gone from being nearly invisible, to being tolerated, to being acknowledged, to being granted equal rights, protections and benefits, to having our families recognized, and now to having the LGBTQ community publicly celebrated with this inspiring streetscape,” said Rand Hoch, president of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in the city’s Pineapple Grove Arts District.
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The $16,000 street art, paid for by Hoch’s group and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, features the traditional rainbow colors for gay, lesbian and bisexual pride, plus a few more: Pink, white and blue for transgender people, and black and brown for people of color in the community.
“It feels like a coming-out party for all of us, doesn’t it?” Mayor Shelly Petrolia said. She led a moment of silence for the 49 innocent victims killed exactly five years ago Saturday — June 12, 2016 — in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, the deadliest anti-LGBTQ terror attack in U.S. history.
Petrolia spoke about her experience growing up with her gay sister. “I watched her go through life struggling, in a time when it wasn’t acceptable, to come to the realization of her own identity,” she said. “I recognize how brave it is to stand up for what you think is right.”
Even in the early 21st century, it was unacceptable for Delray Beach municipal workers to be anything but straight to be treated equally by their employer.
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When city commissioners in June 2006 voted 3-2 to offer benefits reserved for spouses of heterosexual workers to unmarried partners of gay employees, a powerful obstruction stood in the way: the man in charge of running the city’s government day to day, City Manager David Harden.
Harden, who kept a Bible on his desk, told commissioners in a memo that extending family benefits to gay couples “devalues marriage.” The law at the time forbade same-sex marriages.
A year later, Hoch said the city had yet to grant gay employees equal benefits such as time off to attend their immediate families’ funerals or visit them in the hospital.
City commissioners voted unanimously in 2012 to grant gay employees the same partnership benefits married straight couples have. Harden also opposed legally protecting gay people.
When commissioners in 1996 discussed renewing Palm Beach County’s lease on city-owned Anchor Park, the new contract proposal prohibited Delray Beach from discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation.
Gay rights groups or the county could sue the city, Harden said, if it supported the Boy Scouts, which at the time barred girls and gays as troop leaders.
“You have this highly controversial and emotional issue buried in these agreements,” Harden said at the time. “They’re using a remedy that was used in civil rights cases where you had a long history of blatant racial discrimination. I don’t think it’s good public policy.”
Harden served as Delray Beach’s city manager from 1990 until 2012, when he retired from the job. He has since worked as an interim city manager or other managerial positions for towns across Florida such as Palm Springs, Marco Island and Port Orange.
Harden did not return calls Saturday seeking comment on his tenure or that day’s colorful celebration — featuring drag queens, blaring dance music and families — four blocks from his Swinton Avenue house.
Delray Beach isn’t the only city in Palm Beach County painting pride on its streets.
Boynton Beach approved in May spending $12,000 coloring the intersection at East Ocean Avenue and Southeast First Street. West Palm Beach has painted crosswalks in its Northwood neighborhood, funding it with money approved in August.
