The St. Cloud City Council stripped its deputy mayor of his position this week after he publicly accused the council of blocking efforts to issue a proclamation for Pride Month.
Shawn Fletcher, the council’s first openly gay member, was removed from his post at the tense Thursday evening meeting by a unanimous vote of the five-member council, with Fletcher also voting to remove himself as “deputy mayor.” Though the city’s mayor is elected by voters, the deputy mayor is selected by other council members. Fletcher did did not explain why he also voted to remove himself from that post.
The vote followed sharp criticism of Fletcher by the other council members for statements he gave to news outlets in May after the council decided to temporarily halt all city proclamations.
Council members didn’t explicitly say Pride Month was the reason behind the pause, but the timing of their action effectively nixed their ability to declare June as Pride Month in St. Cloud. And that upset Fletcher, who said he felt Pride Month was targeted.
Council member Kolby Urban, who made the motion to take the deputy mayor title from Fletcher, said Fletcher’s statements and press release prompted nationwide, and negative, media coverage and included false information.
“Mr. Fletcher knows full well that these statements were false and grossly mischaracterized his fellow council members and the nearly 70,000 residents of our community,” Urban said. “I find these comments not only offensive, but also irresponsible and borderline defamatory.”
Some of the statements Urban referenced were published in the Orlando Sentinel.
Urban proposed the moratorium on proclamations during a May 20 workshop meeting saying some may be “controversial,” and that the current proclamation policy doesn’t allow enough time for review.
At the Thursday meeting, Fletcher said he did not understand the need for the pause or why it couldn’t wait until July.
June is recognized as Pride month in many communities around the country in recognition of the Stonewall Uprising in New York in 1969, a protest considered a turning point for gay rights in the U.S. In Central Florida, June has even deeper meaning for the local community because of the 2016 massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, a haven for the LGBTQ community, in which 49 people were killed.
Mayor Chris Robertson also criticized Fletcher.
“You need to apologize to all of us,” he said. “You ran us all through the mud.”
Robertson also said Fletcher had “betrayed” his fellow council members and called his actions “sickening.”
He asked Fletcher if he thought he was a homophobe, to which Fletcher said no. He then asked if Fletcher thought he targeted the LGBTQ community, to which he also said no.
“I’m sorry, Shawn, I’m pissed,” Robertson said near the end of the meeting. “I’m not letting it go.”
Robertson spent around an hour asking questions about an upcoming Pride Month event, Proud in the Cloud, and the volunteer group behind it, the St. Cloud Pride Alliance. The event is scheduled to be held on city property, and Robertson said the city financially supported it.
“I said, ‘Wait a minute, didn’t we just bend over backwards to help these folks? And how can we be — they say that we’re discriminating against them?’” Robertson said.
The mayor was upset an Alliance member posted online Fletcher’s comments about the proclamation pause. He was also concerned about “irregularities” and “misrepresentation” in the applications for the event and if city tax dollars had been used properly.
Fletcher apologized for some of what happened. “I think some things got really emotional. Council member Urban, I personally apologize to you,” he said.
But he also stood by some of his other statements.
“I do believe it’s undemocratic, because I do believe it was targeted. I do, I really do,” Fletcher said.
The Pride Month proclamation should have been voted on, he added.
“To not have something move forward to where you put your name on it and you actually vote for it. That’s undemocratic,” he said.