Last Saturday saw “Pride in the Park” at Watertown’s Riverside Park. Billed as “family-friendly,” the events included a drag queen show and a drag queen story hour for children. A group of Neo-nazi men showed up as did others protesting the event. Apparently, a young man reading the Bible aloud via a megaphone was arrested not for reading the Bible in a public place but because city ordinances ban using amplification at the park without a permit, especially if the amplification interferes with a previously permitted event, which was the case Saturday.

This already-bad event was made worse by the Neo-Nazis showing up and others also not from Watertown illegally protesting.  As a result of all this, the organizers of this drag queen debauchery received far more sympathy and attention than they should have. There’s a way to protest what we disagree with, and a way not to. Doing it wrong hurts way more than it helps.