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Sat Oct 11 2008

Dispatches from the Front

'Army of God' visit Pride
by Free Press staff
September 21, 2004

The “Army of God” (AOG) made a brief appearance in Columbus during June 26 Pride activities. Army of God “Anti-abortion Hero of the Faith” Chuck Spignola and AOG agitator and roving “photo journalist” Jonathan O’Toole accompanied by well-known local “sidewalk abortion counselor” Repent Man, a posse of (mostly) teenage boys wearing “Got AIDS Yet?” tees, and a crew of videographers, attempted to disrupt the annual Pride interfaith service, held in conjunction with Comfest, at the Goodale Park Gazebo. After about a 40 minute tete-a-tete with Columbus Police and Comfest representatives, the group was escorted off the premises. O’Toole and Spignola argued, often heatedly, that the police and Comfest were violating their First Amendment Rights. Police later allowed re-entry at another point, but the group made no attempt to interfere with the service still in progress.

A few hours after the incident O’Toole, Spignola, and some of their teenage friends were spotted on the corner of Broad and High during the Pride parade, huddled around an illegal trashcan fire, roasting a pair of homemade male ragdolls fastened together in a sexual position bouncing from a fishing pole. A video captured Spignola, between “sodomite” taunts lobed at marchers, giggling into the fire, “We are the Gerbil Protection League, we oppose sodomites and those that use innocent animals for their sexual pleasure.”

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