As the Pine City LGBT community meets for a picnic today, several residents opposed to homosexuality will meet to protest what they see as an “incorrect” lifestyle according to the Star Tribune. The LGBT picnic is in its third year, and is hosted by the East Central Men’s Circle, a support network for LGBT people in central Minnesota from Duluth to Isanti. The first two picnics went over without any hassle, but this year Pine City resident Patrice DeGray is organizing a picnic in opposition to the “appalling boldness and brazenness of this well-organized, radical fringe of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning community.”

One of the LGBT picnic organizers, Gary Skarsten, told the Star Tribune that one purpose of the picnic is to connect with the larger Pine City community. “We pay our taxes, we’re regular citizens and we’re proud of the fact that we can meet together and talk about mutual problems. And we want to reach out and let the community know they have nothing to be afraid of from gay and bisexual men.”

DeGray, a Republican party activist who has been very outspoken against same-sex relationships, said that her picnic will be one “that allows those who believe in the God-ordained, time-tested, healthier alternative lifestyle of marriage between one man and one woman an opportunity to celebrate their uniqueness and unity around old-fashioned, traditional family values.”

She told the Pine City Pioneer, “This is a huge, well-funded, well-organized movement that is not localized to Pine City. The GLBT movement has the ability and is using that ability to indoctrinate our children and grandchildren in our public school systems all over the United States….

“Sexual topics, methods and practices are discussed (in schools) in a way that would make most of us over 45 blush or vomit. What does that mean for the next generation?”

Picnic organizers had advertized the event as the world’s only rural LGBT pride event. That advertizing upset DeGray. “Does the Pine City community truly want to be known as the ’smallest city in the world with a gay pride event?” she said.

The LGBT picnic organizers said the event is not “anti-family” as DeGray insinuated. Don Quaintance of the Men’s Circle told the Pioneer, “All it (the pro-family picnic) proves is that we, in the GLBT community, need to keep educating people about who we are. We are your next door neighbor. Zeroing in on the words, ‘pro-family’ make us look like we’re not, and that promotes hate. We want to counter that.”

“We want kids. We want marriage equality…. It’s a different kind of family the churches talk about, the mom, dad and kids nuclear family. That doesn’t happen in many cases today…. They are promoting something that doesn’t exist in many cases,” Quaintance said.