When the Twin Cities Gay Pride festival kicks off today in Minneapolis, evangelist Brian Johnson will be free to walk through Loring Park and talk about his religious beliefs. That's as it should be. When an event is open to the public, anyone who attends has the basic right to free speech.

But the dustup that Johnson caused this week raised important questions about competing First Amendment principles. Should any group that pays to hold a public event at a city park be forced to allow attendees to spread messages with which it disagrees? Does free speech include distributing printed information? And who can set the rules for an open-to-the-public festival -- the Park Board or event sponsor?

Johnson's case forced a court decision about whether he could pass out free materials such as Bibles even though the event's sponsors have strict rules and fees about distributing fliers.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim ruled that the evangelist can distribute items as long as he is not disruptive. That's the right choice. A society that prizes free expression must allow even intolerant, inflammatory speech.

"The court's task here is to balance these competing interests to the greatest extent possible -- to enable all speakers to exercise their constitutional rights -- and then to depend on reasonable and law-abiding people to stay within proper limits," Tunheim wrote. His ruling came in response to Pride's request for a court order barring Johnson from distributing Christian literature construed as antigay within the park boundaries this weekend.

Pride attorneys had argued that the group paid the city $32,000 in various fees and permits and should be able to control who could distribute literature. They said those fees help pay for security and cleanup and that it was not fair to paying vendors to allow attendees the same rights to distribute materials at no cost.

Johnson, an evangelist from Hayward, Wis., has a long history with the Pride festival. For 10 years he paid to be a registered vendor at the event. But last year he was denied a vendor's permit, said Pride organizers, because over the years he misled organizers about his purpose and disturbed attendees by urging them to repent for the "sin of homosexuality." Festival organizers argued that they should not be forced to include a message that counters the very purpose of the festival -- expressing gay pride.

Though Johnson was rejected as a vendor in 2009, he showed up anyway. Police arrested him when he refused to leave, but charges were later dropped.

This year, after the vendor's permit was denied, Johnson hired a lawyer and took his case directly to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which operates the parks. The board refused to bar Johnson from handing out materials at the festival, arguing that his right to speak and distribute information was one and the same under the First Amendment.

The reasonable compromise would have been for Johnson and friends to express their views across the street from the park as festivalgoers flowed by. But that's not what Johnson wants, nor what the court decided.

Now a group that seeks tolerance and understanding for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people has to practice tolerance toward someone with whom it disagrees. And Johnson will be challenged to deliver his message without causing disruption to those who want to attend the festival in peace.