Gay rights activists have begun circulating petitions to recall Vice Mayor Ted Hickman of Dixon, California, after he penned a column in the Independent Voice on Friday calling for July to be a celebration of “Straight Pride American Month,” or SPAM.
Hickman’s opinion piece, titled “That’s Life,” has drawn the ire of members of the LGBTQ community, who have formed groups online to create a recall against him. A protest has also been planned for the city’s next council meeting, which is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, July 3, according to the city’s official website.
So far, the Facebook page set up to gather signatures to recall Hickman has garnered approximately 1,000 followers.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, another group has scheduled a LGBTQ Pride Day rally in the Solano County city on July 27 in response to Hickman’s comments.
In his column, Hickman referred to gay people as “tinker bells” and “fairies”; referred to Gay Pride Month as “LGBTQ-WTF,” and suggested gay people have an”inferior[ity] complex” that tends to make them engage in the “‘show we are different’ type of crap.”
Devon Minnema, one of Hickman’s colleagues on the city council, spoke out against Hickman online, saying he’d known about his character for a while.
“I have known what kind of person he is for a long time, but have never garnered enough community or council support to take action,” Minnema wrote on Facebook. “I hope that the other councilmen will see through the ideology of hate that they share with him, and do the right thing in coming weeks. There is no part of the community that is untouched by the venom that Councilman Hickman has spewed over the years.”
According to the Sacramento Bee, Hickman said “only thin-skinned people took offense” in response to criticism of his post.