OK, kiddo! Here are all the fantastically amazing posts tagged with Vancouver
Postal Workers Take A Stand On Anti-Gay Mail
Over 70 Vancouver postal workers walked off the job yesterday morning after discovering they were to deliver unaddressed homophobic pamphlets. The 28-page pamphlets, published by an Ontario church, tells gay readers that they are “ungodly, unhealthy, and unnatural” and calls AIDS “the consequences of homosexuality.”
Canada Post responded by saying they’re not in the business of censorship and will deliver the pamphlets, but would also not require that their postal workers handle them. Instead, managers will put the offensive brochures into envelopes and deliver them themselves. (Though, I suspect the envelopes are just a matter of convenience, as duct-taping the pamphlets into balls, dipping them into vats of self-curing synthetic compounds, then soldering them shut in elegant steel sarcophagi locked by puzzles requires unaffordable resources.)
Of course, in fairness, I haven’t seen the pamphlets so I can’t verify whether or not they’d qualify as hate mail under Canadian law. It’s my strong belief that—barring the incitement of hatred—every Canadian has the right to speak their mind. But, to the person that crafted the fliers… Dude, seriously, that can’t be your excuse…
Sending lengthy, unsolicited homophobic pamphlets half-way across the country? Talk about misplaced zeal! Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do, bucko!
- Postal workers upset with homophobic hate mail [Canada.com]
- Anti-homosexual brochure held up at Canada Post [CBC News]
Lobby Group Explodes Over Gay Film Festival
The Vancouver Queer Film Festival, a prominent LGBT arts media event, was met with great success last month, thanks very much to a standard grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Strangely, the success and funding somehow isn’t sitting well with the anti-gay lobby group, REAL Women of Canada. Spokeswoman Gwen Landolt (who scoured the film listings to publicize such gems as: “Deconstructing Crack Ho” and “Toilet Sex in Canadian Cinema”) had these kind words:
The films [in the festival] are simply degenerate and degrading to humanity. There is no artistry there, the films are used as a political statement against established social mores, a way of showing contempt, of saying “we don’t have to be held to normal standards of behaviour.”
Wow, I know exactly what you mean. When I was at the festival, instead of watching “Pride and Prejudice: LGBT Struggles for Human Rights” I must’ve accidentally walked into “Horrifyingly Gratuitous Debauchery” back-to-back with “Look At Me; I’m Going Potty On Your Family’s Lawn!” It was so awful; both were being force-fed to unwilling parishioners and impressionable children by drug addicts and activist judges. Why did you fund this film festival, Department of Canadian Heritage? Why?
Ahem… Landolt then attacked the Heritage department for having promoted tolerance in the past.
The Heritage department is filled with problems. The department has got to be examined; it’s a disgrace. In the public accounts of 2004-2005, the department issued $112,800 in funding to EGALE [Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere], for the purpose of “furthering participation in Canadian society.” Was that really necessary?
Oh; that was a question. Let’s see, was the funding for equality organizations really necessary? Well, as long as groups like yours, Gwen, spend every waking minute pressuring our lawmakers to ensure that gays and lesbians are devoid of rights, culture, and their constitutional freedom as a citizen to make whatever freakin’ arts films they want—yes! It is really necessary.
Thankfully, the Department of Canadian Heritage has a good sense of reality. Spokeswoman Dominique Collin, had this to say:
Through their Festival, the [Vancouver Out On Screen Film Society] presents a wide range of culturally diverse media arts and attempts to bring the issues and experiences of the LGBT communities into the mainstream, fostering acceptance and understanding.
Right on. Do you think it’s working?
Parents Protest New Course
Over 800 Vancouver protesters gathered this week to protest a new grade 12 course entitled “Social Justice.” The course will include a unit that focuses on gay role models, sparking fears that children province-wide will turn gay. The horror.
Murray Coren, who was granted a role as a consultant on the curriculum, was forced to state the obvious:
There was no information about gay or lesbian people [when I went to school], and having gone through that system for 13 years, it didn’t make me straight. So I don’t know how information about gay and lesbian people is going to turn anyone queer.
The protesters, for some reason, aren’t buying it, and presented a petition with over 14,000 signatures demanding that the government do the ultra ambiguous: “to defend and to preserve parental and children’s rights” and “to stop selling out to special interest groups.”
The kicker: the course is an elective.
- Protesters rally against gay and lesbian issues course [CBC News]
- Gay couple has too much say over lessons: petitioners [Vancouver Sun]
Pride™
The word Pride™ has been trademarked by several of Canada’s Pride™ organisations, as some small promoters have discovered.
Jamie Lee Hamilton was delivered a letter from the Vancouver Pride™ Society informing her that she would have to pay $65 to promote her events ManPride and TrannyPride this summer. Jim Deva, a Vancouver bookstore owner, thinks the whole concept is ridiculous.
I don’t think the Vancouver Pride Society board was elected to be the Pride police. The whole concept of this Pride policing is not healthy at all. It will not increase diversity. Some people will be acceptable and other people won’t. I find that the dangerous sort of part of the whole thing.
Pride™ Toronto, the organisation spearheading this movement, said that they trademarked the word Pride™ as a protection from big business.
As for my thoughts… I’ve been a proud™ attendant of many Pride™ events in the™ past, and I’m personally™ in disagreement™ that the word™ Pride™ is something™ that requires™ protection™.
