“He has said his goal is to get everyone to know Jesus [and] he is allowed to do that,” Belstler said. “[But] it’s really kind of a nuisance.”

In an undated 2009 booking photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriffs Office via KSTP Television, Brian Johnson of Hayward, Wis., is shown. Organizers of the Twins Cities Pride Festival are trying to stop the evangelist from attending their weekend event in which he says he just wants to hand out Bibles at the festival in Minneapolis Loring Park. Charges against him stemming from his attendnace at last years festival were dropped.

A man who has passed out Bibles at a Minnesota gay pride parade for years is suing after city officials restricted him from giving out the book at this year’s event.

Brian Johnson, of Hayward, Wis., started handing out Bibles at the Twin Cities Pride Festival in 1995, and three years later, gave out the books in Minneapolis’ Loring Park from a booth approved by parade organizers. But in recent years, the people behind the event, which draws as many as 300,000 people, have tried to oust him, first nixing his bid for a booth and then having him arrested in 2009.

Johnson, a taxidermist by trade and an evangelical by calling, sat out last year’s event for fear of arrest, according to his attorney. But the legal wrangling has continued behind the scenes, and this year parade organizers, at the suggestion of a federal judge, designated “free-speech zones” on the Pride Festival grounds, where people like Johnson could distribute literature the organizers wouldn’t otherwise approve.

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