Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The liberal Yorktown Foundation disqualified the crowd favorite and clear winner in the Yorktown Lighted Boat Parade, Gloucester’s Southern Rock. Certified the winner by the judges, they saw fit to disqualify Mr. Berger’s entry. They said, “in the wake of a controversy…” It’s only a controversy to the minority who share their beliefs.

Dr. Walt Akers, member of the Board of Directors for the Yorktown Foundation that oversees Yorktown events, found the Let’s Go Brandon banner offensive.

The board feels terrible. Feelings … feelings … feelings. We do have 1st Amendment rights in this country at the moment. We’ll retain those rights as long as we have “free and fair” elections.

If I were in his position, I would not change the selection and mention his constitutional right to his expression. That being said, I wish Mr. Berger had chosen a more appropriate venue to air his beliefs and stuck with a theme more appropriate to the holiday season. That would be an end of it.

I entered a boat two years ago with a manger, live Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem star and three wise men bearing gifts. It was cold, rainy and I didn’t even get honorable mention. Talk about reason for the season! Mr. Berger won that as well, but the judges chose #2 since he’d won the previous year.

If his boat had only had an LGBT theme this year. It would have been colorful and never questioned by the left, rather celebrated.

York County is electing people who have moved here from blue states to escape the consequences of their vote—higher taxes, fees, less freedoms—and who now seek to make it blue. That is the definition of insanity.

Kendall Sentz
Gloucester Point, Va.