A difference of opinion about whether hand-held flag poles are allowed on the Statehouse grounds put a gay rights group of about 30 people in the right mood for a protest Friday afternoon.

The Kansas Equality Coalition had scheduled a 3 p.m. rally in protest of Gov. Sam Brownback's plans to attend an Aug. 6 prayer rally in Houston sponsored by the American Family Association, a Mississippi group best known for objecting to what it sees as indecency on television. The group opposes gay marriage and protests actions it views as promoting homosexuality.

As KEC director Thomas Witt and others were preparing to move large American flags and diversity flags attached to poles to the south steps of the Capitol, however, Kansas Highway Patrol Lt. Eric Hatcher told them they would have to remove the flags from their poles, which weren't allowed on the grounds.

Members of the group could carry the flags, Hatcher said, "but not the poles or anything else that could be used as a weapon."

When Witt insisted that people on the other side of the gay rights issue were allowed to carry flags and signs on poles, Hatcher told him regulations prohibited signs.

"I tell people this all the time," said Hatcher, supervisor of the KHP's Capitol Police. "I'm bending the rules a little bit to allow them to have the flags."

Photos in The Topeka Capital-Journal's archives from events on the Statehouse grounds earlier this year clearly show people with flags and signs attached to or mounted on poles.

Brownback spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said the governor would go to the Houston rally if his schedule permits. As for Friday’s protest, she said Brownback respected the right of Kansans to demonstrate peacefully.

The protesters complied with Hatcher's request and proceeded with the rally, highlighted by a speech from West Point graduate and former Army Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged in 2010 under the military's Don't Ask,Don't Tell policy. Witt, Topeka City Councilman Chad Manspeaker and Topeka lawyer Pedro Irigonegaray also addressed the spirited crowd.

Choi said he was willing to give his life in defense of country throughout his time in the military but now is fighting some something inevitable and unconditional, freedom and equality for all people.

Choi, who wore his Army uniform to the rally, said the uniform was for all Americans, not just straight men and women.

Anyone who won't fight for freedom, justice and equality for everyone doesn't deserve to wear the uniform, he said, adding that Brownback isn't fight for freedom and justice for all Kansans.

In the same vein, Witt read a letter to Brownback, which he later presented to an employee at the governor's ceremonial office in the Capitol, called on Brownback to represent all Kansans, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens.

Brownback's attendance at the Houston rally would condone a view that relegates LGBT people to "being less than second-class citizens," Witt wrote.

Manspeaker said his family moved to Kansas in the 1850s and 1860s from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to build a free state based on equality.

"That's the state I live in," Manspeaker said, but it's not the state Gov. Sam Brownback lives in."

Irigonegaray said he could remember an earlier rally at the Capitol's south steps, from where people marched to Topeka City Hall is support of an ordinance designed to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The ordinance, he said, received not one vote from the city council.

"Equality is not an issue that should be discussed this late in our nation's history," Irigonegaray said, adding that it was time to again put forward the ordinance a former council rejected.

Manspeaker said such an ordinance would have his vote.

Between the discussion with Hatcher about regulations on flag poles and the speeches, most of those attending the rally walked to the curb of S.W. 10th Street to "welcome" members of Westboro Baptist Church, who were conducting their own protest of the protest from a position across S.W. 10th in front of the Kansas Judicial Center.

Church members sang hymns and supporters of the equality coalition chanted, "equality now," "God is love' and "we will not disappear."

Choi and former Army Lt. Dan Manning, Wichita, also a West Point graduate discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, crossed the street to exchange greeting with Shirley Phelps-Roper.