Following a weeklong brouhaha over the appointment of anti-gay activist Timothy Busch to lead the Napa Fourth of July parade, Busch has apologized to the LGBT community and will remain as the parade's grand marshal.
Deb Stallings, a Napa lesbian who started an online petition demanding Bush's ouster, calls it "a better outcome" than if Busch had just been removed without any discussion.
"I feel that we have a story with a happy ending," she said in a phone interview last Thursday, June 26.
The Napa Sunrise Rotary, sponsors of the annual parade, selected Busch because his hotel, the Meritage Resort and Spa, is an important part of the town's economy. Busch lives in Orange County and owns seven other large hotels around the state as a partner in the Pacific Hospitality Group.
Stallings said she was dismayed when she read about Busch's selection on the Napa Valley Patch, a local news website, two weeks ago.
"I knew he had given money to Prop 8," said Stallings, referring to the 2008 voter-approved ban against same-sex marriage in California that was struck down a year ago June 26 on a technicality by the U.S. Supreme Court.
So Stallings, who lives in Napa with her wife and works as director of development for Horizons Foundation, the LGBT grant-making organization based in San Francisco, decided to find out more about him.
What she learned was that, in addition to the $10,000 he donated to the Yes on 8 campaign, Busch also had railed against LGBT people in an article on the Catholic World Report in 2011.
"So many people, including those of faith," he told the website, "miss the point that (homosexual) relations are categorically wrong. Throughout history, any civilization that has embraced open homosexuality has failed. Ours will fail, too, if we continue in this direction."
A stalwart supporter of the right-wing element of the Catholic Church, Busch is also the founder of several Catholic think tanks, organizations and private schools. And he heads the Busch Firm, an Irvine legal group that specializes in estate planning, business dealings, religious organizations and private schools.
"I felt my neighbors who had chosen him (Busch) did not know about this," Stallings said. "And after a couple of days it was clear to me that the folks involved in this (the parade organizers) didn't share these opinions."
According to Stallings, the LGBT community marches openly in the Napa Fourth of July parade and always receives a warm welcome from the crowd.
"So, I wondered," she said, " did anyone call him to see if he still feels that way."
The result, following a flurry of emails between Stallings and parade organizer Doris Gentry, was a written apology from Busch that the Napa Valley Register printed in its opinion pages last week.
Busch wrote, "I am honored to be serving with my wife, Steph, as grand marshals for the Fourth of July parade in Napa. While offering thanks, please know how deeply saddened I am for offending anyone due to past statements. As a Christian, I strive to love our neighbors as ourselves - regardless of belief.
"I realize I sometimes did not express myself well and that my words are hurtful. For that, I am sorry. Taking a cue from Pope Francis, we need to lead with love, not judgment," added Busch. "I hope the parade can remind us of our common values of finding strength in diversity as we celebrate one another as a united community."
Stallings said she found out about the apology when she ran into Gentry at a local restaurant. Stallings and her wife were taking her wife's 93-year-old father out for breakfast. There was a table full of young boys and one of them addressed a woman at the table as "Doris." Stallings thought it might be Gentry, whom she had never met, so she told the woman who she was and got a big hug in response.
"I've got great news to tell you," Gentry said, according to Stallings.
Gentry did not respond to requests for comment from the Bay Area Reporter.
Then Busch called Stallings to speak with her directly, and she asked him if he would say the same things about LGBT people today as he did in the Catholic Report three years ago.
His response was "absolutely not," she said.
"That was all I needed to hear. I don't know if his heart is changed, but we can't change someone's heart," she said.
"I feel like this is one of the hardest things I've done," Stallings said. "People were saying, 'This isn't Napa. He doesn't represent Napa. Why are you making such a big stink about this?' But, this is not just a gay thing. I would have done the same thing if it had been about Hispanics or African-Americans."