Knight Parade will not include sole gay krewe

The Krewe of Cavaliers won't be in this year's Knight Parade after complaints about last year's behavior.

By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 4, 2002

TAMPA -- What is the Krewe of Sant'Yago Knight Parade if not an invitation to get a little crazy?

Seventh Avenue in Ybor City becomes a roiling sea of fancy floats, swashbuckling krewes and partying spectators. Rock music pumps through the night air. Beer is more easily had than water. And pretty girls make out like bandits with fistfuls of free, plastic necklaces.

But the risque antics have never been enough to make the parade's organizer, the Krewe of the Knights of Sant'Yago, kick any social club out of its lineup.

Until now. The parade's only gay club, the Krewe of Cavaliers, has been told it can't participate when the parade begins rolling through Ybor City in two weeks.

Sant'Yago's board of directors gave the Cavaliers the boot after several complaints about the krewe's behavior during last year's parade, said chairman Randy Conte.

"When the parade starts making problems, we have to look into it," said Conte, who has been in charge of the parade for eight years.

The complaints were anonymous. Conte said the Sant'Yago krewe received the first call in March, several weeks after the parade. Three more trickled in during the following months, he said.

The gripes were mainly about suggestive behavior, Conte said, but he declined to discuss specifics. "I don't think I want to put that in the paper," he said.

Members of the Cavaliers say the Sant'Yago krewe has given them mixed messages about the reason for the ban. After participating in the parade for five years, the Cavaliers were sent a form letter in mid November that said they were being thrown out because the parade had become too long.

But no other float was kicked out even though the number of participants increased this year from 65 to 75.

The real reason for the ejection, Conte acknowledged, was the allegations.

Gary Smith, president of the Cavaliers, said he doesn't think the krewe's sexual orientation spurred the decision.

But Smith said that when Conte met with him last summer to discuss the complaints, "he mentioned that a number of the krewes had people who were misbehaving. Ours was not the only one."

Some Cavaliers are upset about the decision and wonder if it was made fairly.

"I'm very unhappy about it," said krewe member Leland Cool. "I think the reasons we're not going to be in the parade, at least the reasons we were given, are pretty petty."

Nadine Smith, director of Equality Florida, a social justice advocacy group, said she suspects the krewe is being targeted.

"The facts as I understand them certainly raise an eyebrow about what went into their decisions to remove one particular group from the parade," she said. "As an organization, we will follow the lead of the Krewe of Cavaliers, in terms of pursuing or not pursuing, or investigating further."

When local officials began the parade in 1947, it was intended as a tool to promote Ybor City. In 1975, they handed it off to the Krewe of the Knights of Sant'Yago because it had become too costly to run.

The city and county still provide hundreds of officers for the event and clean up afterward. But the Sant'Yago krewe, created in the early 1970s as a Latin alternative to the all-white Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, still runs the show. It finds corporate sponsors for the event, which drew an estimated 225,000 spectators last year.

And it is Sant'Yago that decides who participates and who doesn't.

Aside from the Cavaliers, the krewe turned away six others this year for such transgressions as applying too late or not having enough insurance, Conte said.

The Cavaliers have no political agenda, Smith said, and they don't want to turn this disappointment into one.

"It's his parade," Smith said about Conte. "If he says he has complaints, I'm not going to challenge him on it."

The Cavaliers will apply next year to re-enter the parade and hope they will be accepted, Smith said.

The club began in 1986 as a group of gay men and women who wanted to throw an annual, black-tie bash for charity. It wasn't until 1997 that they pooled their money to rent a float and join the Knight Parade. Both krewes said their relations have been good over the years.

The Cavaliers had already partly paid for their $8,000 float, which is in the form of a castle, when they received the ejection letter.

Conte said the board's decision was not influenced by the fact that the complaints about the krewe's behavior had homosexual undertones. He said complaints about inappropriate heterosexual behavior would be punished the same way.

"It was nothing personal," Conte said. "We would do that to any organization."

Conte acknowledged that he would have no way of investigating the complaints even if he were so inclined because the krewe does not record callers' names or phone numbers.

-- Kathryn Wexler can be reached at (813) 226-3383.

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