EDITORIAL – Anti-Pride protesters should be ashamed of themselves
(Image:Mel Rothenburger.)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
WE SEEM TO HAVE LOST the art of respectful protest.
The incident at the North Kamloops Library last weekend is a good example. You may have seen the police report that there was an anti-Pride protest at the library.
As part of Pride Week celebrations, a Drag Storytime was held at the library for children.
There are still people out there who believe homosexuality and its related shades are an unnatural affront to God.
They have a right to think that, no matter how wrong they are. They have a right to protest, though right-thinking people may be find such protests objectionable.
But when a protest turns nasty, its legitimacy is cancelled.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
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Castanet reports that one of the protesters contacted them to give their side of the story surrounding the alleged assault. The read is comedic if not for how sadly it reflects on this individual.
The woman is clearly unhinged, and her mind is deeply hijacked by conspiracy theories of the most ridiculous sort.
However, as dim witted as she certainly is to believe such nonsense, she is entitled to believe that nonsense with absolute fervour.
5G is coming for all of us – it’s already infected Council.
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So Mel, you are saying that the Christian denominations are BIGOTS because we don’t believe in this doctrine of the PRIDE but believe that all people have the right to their own Ideologies and doctrine without shoving it down every ones throat that is not with them.
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What you have said has merit and a lot of truth.
Are we perhaps seeing an Old Testament situation in a New Testament setting?
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I’m not sure if it is the place of Kamloops City Council to assume authority over people who appear to be expressing “religious” beliefs. As I read a statement by Katie Neustaeter, that seems to be the message she was appearing to give.
If she could clarify as a post on this article, Mel, I think that would be appropriate.
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To be fair, what I saw on the Castanet video was a pro-drag protester approaching an anti-drag protester, and getting well within that person’s personal space, and pushing their phone into their face. The anti-drag protester slapped the phone away.
The aggressor in my view was the social justice warrior. If you get into someone’s personal space like that, you’re liable to get checked, and she did get checked.
As Armchair said, people quickly forget that individuals in this country are allowed to have views in opposition to your own. You do not have a moral high ground that you can impose on another to stifle their Charter rights to express those views.
That same Charter gives people the right to exist and pursue their own views, and live their life as they see fit, such as walking around in drag. At one point in history, that was a dangerous practice. The right of expression doesn’t apply only to one particular worldview.
Some people question the preoccupation with drag performances in front of children. They have every right to do so.
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I am giving you the “thumbs up” on your insightful comment PC.
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Appreciate you, Pierre.
Rationale discourse, people of conscience, critical thought and logic will return to our culture, but it will take work. This country has too much promise to stand back and watch it degrade as it has.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience”.
– C.S. Lewis
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