To the editor,
As a 35-year resident of Wingham and area, I was so proud that North Huron council, led by Reeve Bernie Bailey, responding to the request of a group from our local high school, decided to raise the Pride flag at town hall.
And then the reaction set in.
The anti-Pride sentiment is hateful and uninformed intolerance, bigotry cowering behind the shield of religion and homophobia. When our children went to F.E. Madill Secondary School some 30 years ago, the harassment of those perceived to be gay was rampant in the halls, the buses, and in the parking lots. How many of the suicides at Madill and other high schools have been the direct result of this endless bullying, ostracising, and violence, now amplified by postings on social media?
It must end!
Shame on Coun. Palmer. And shame on Huron-Bruce MP Ben Lobb for voting against the bill that would ban conversion “therapy.” The recent Netflix documentary Pray Away (2021) shows the abusive nature and tragic results of this so-called “therapy.”
Being LGBT is not a sin. It is not a sickness. It is not a choice. It is a part of the wonderful diversity of what it means to be human. As my sister has said about her son with Down syndrome, “God doesn’t make junk!”
In my family history research, I have uncovered many examples of ancient prejudices that were harmful, and even deadly, to those who were different in some way or other.
Left-handed people were persecuted and said to be sinister and demon-possessed at one time.
My mother’s ancestors in 1640s New Haven, Connecticut witnessed the execution of an eccentric pig-keeper who had a bad eye, after one of the sows in his care bore a stillborn, deformed piglet that had only one eye in the middle of its forehead. Superstitious villagers noticed that the eye looked like the pig-keeper’s bad eye and accused him of having intercourse with the sow. He was endlessly harangued and interrogated, thrown in jail, and when he refused to acknowledge his “sin” of bestiality, was hanged, just as the Bible demanded in Leviticus. But first they slew the sow right in front of him with a sword!
Some of my mother’s other ancestors lived near Salem, Massachusetts, where a prominent Christian minister, Cotton Mather, instigated the persecution of “witches.” between February 1692 and May 1693. More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty were found ‘guilty,” 19 of whom were hanged and at least five people died in jail. Nonsense and mass hysteria, but justified by Mather as God’s will. In November 2001, years after the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the trials, the Massachusetts legislature passed an act exonerating all who had been convicted and naming each of the innocent.
There comes a time when past error, ignorance, and evil must be acknowledged and called out for what they are.
Is the complainant to North Huron council, Mr. Kikkert, and Coun. Palmer aware of the origin of the taunt that, in the past, gay men were considered nothing better than people fit to start a fire? Are they aware that many Christians and other people of faith do not agree with them? It is wilful blindness to just pretend that the persecution of the LGBT community is inconsequential. Just like the fear-mongering towards the Chinese and the imposition of a head tax after they built our railways in western Canada well over a century ago. Just like the way Canada turned a blind eye, turning back a shipload of Jewish refugees in the late 1930s, condemning them to an unbelievably cruel fate in Nazi Germany. Just like those who, when they see “Black lives matter,” complain that “All lives matter; why should Blacks get all the attention?” Recognizing the rights and value of an oppressed minority in no way lessens the value and rights of the dominant majority. It is a dark and grim day when we turn a blind eye to human suffering!
In the late 18th century, Irish statesman Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Thank you to the gay-straight alliance at F.E. Madill, Bernie Bailey, Trevor Seip, and so many others – all good people who do NOT choose to turn their heads and do nothing.
Brent Bowyer
Wingham
