GreenDude

Waking up to the news this morning I heard a story about a Toronto church group who spent the evening demonstrating against homosexuality in front of a house owned by a gay couple. Apparently this same group had previously driven a lesbian couple out of the same neighborhood.

A quick glance across local news feeds failed to yield a link to the story (perhaps someone will oblige in the comments), so you’ll have to trust me for now.

I think what made the story interesting was that the couple’s neighbours decided that they weren’t too impressed with this sort of organized harassment so they came out and demonstrated right back at the church group. The neighbours also called the police, but the demonstrators left prior to their arrival.

Now my first inclination was to try to point out the “error of their ways” to this misguided church group. Citing a few choice utterances by their Lord, (“This is My commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” came immediately to mind.) however I think that instead I’ll go a little broader.

Fortunately for us we live in a free society, (how free and for how long is a matter of debate of course) and one of the things that makes our society “free” is that we have agreed that everyone has the ability to speak their mind, AKA the right to free speech. We even have the right to lawful assembly and the right to peaceful protest thrown in for good measure.

What does this mean really? Well it means that EVERYONE has a right to tell everyone else what they think. This includes both White Supremacists  and  the Anti-Defamation League, Anti-Abortion and Pro-Choice, as well as supporters of all political, religious, or  cultural sects. It is not ok for anyone to say “We’re aloud to say what we want, but those who oppose us are not.” (Well it’s ok for them to say it, but it’s not ok to actually follow through and prevent their opponents from speaking.)

So I say good on the church group for at least having a conviction (however misguided I may feel it is) and standing up and letting people know. That is, after all, what we all should do when we see something we don’t think is right or is potentially harmful to our society. Stand up and tell everyone  who will listen. This is how one person can make a difference.

I also want to applaud the neighbours for doing the same. They saw a situation that they could not abide and they came together to stand up and be heard as well.

So there it is. In our society we have agreed that everyone, no matter how misguided or offensive has not only the permission to, but the duty to share their beliefs with the rest of us. What remains for the rest of society to do is protest right back when we cannot tolerate their message.

I wonder how that church would take to a demonstration put on by the residents of their target neighbourhood? It would be great to hear that story when I wake up one day soon.

First off a big Happy New Year to everybody! It’s been a very hectic time for this GreenDude since Christmas time, with the kids being off school, New Years with the far off friends, and a “vacation” to the land of the Mouse. After spending nearly 2 weeks south of the border I came to some interesting conclusions that I thought I would share with you.

I really don’t understand US politics
Both the Democrats and Republicans are in full swing with their respective presidential primaries. Apparently these are a series of what we would call Leadership Conventions in which members of the parties in various states have their say on who they think should be their party’s candidate in the fall election. Each party holds a few primaries (and caucuses, I have no idea what the difference is) over the course of a few weeks which leads up to a massive multi-state set of elections held on the same day. I guess the preliminary rounds are used to help candidates decide whether or not to continue to their campaigns, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why they just don’t do it all at once.

American news coverage really sucks
Between the ambulance chasing of CNN and the way right wing, Bush loving Fox News, Americans really have no ability to view actual news coverage. CNN has taken sensationalism of news to new heights (lows?) and basically spends the entire day dissecting mabye 4 different stories in every conceivable way, while letting the rest of the news go untouched. Fox “journalists” spend as much time as possible in every report bashing Democrats and “liberals” so the amount of news that they actually report in a given day could be served up in a 1/2 hour show with plenty of room for commercials. Thank God the Daily Show has found a way to get past the writers strike and get back on the air.

I now know why the US is heading for a major socio-economic collapse
Because even one person outside of Brtiney Spears’ immediate family gives a rat’s ass about her personal life! Honestly, CNN spent literally hours of time covering her latest breakdown and hospitalization; and if that wasn’t enough they then spent 2 days covering how Dr. Phil “ambushed” Spears in her hospital room! My God! The mind boggles!

Americans are actually polite
I’m a pretty outgoing person (much to the constant chagrin of my lovely wife) so I tend to strike up conversations with whoever is around. To a person, I found every American that I spoke to very friendly, courteous and polite. Now as a typical Canadian I have fallen victim at times to believing the stereotype of the “rude American” and frankly I’ve never really experienced it on a one-on-one level. However, I did see a lot of rude behaviour during my trip. To my suprise, whenever I witnessed poor public behaviour the perpetrator was either Asian, Latin or Indian. Frankly I was shocked, and it really made me wonder what the deal was with these people because there really was no cause for any of it.

Don’t ever go to a theme park every day of your vacation!
It may sound like fun to go to a Disney park every day, but the toll on your sanity really isn’t worth it. Don’t get me wrong, Disney does a really good job of running a park (Very clean, Very friendly staff, and Fast Passes are a brilliant innovation.) but to spend every…single…day…walking…around…lining up…walking… … … I was pretty close to snapping by day 4 of 6. Thankfully we were able to convince the wife to take one morning off to just relax.

All in all it was a good trip, but I’m very thankful to be back where the money isn’t all green, where words are spelled correctly, where we have decent news coverage, and where all my friends are.

I’ve finally got around to reading Rick Mercer’s book (Rick Mercer Report: The Book.) It’s a great read and I highly recommend it to all Canadians, but I digress. I just came across one of my favourite moments from the show, Pierre Berton giving advice on rolling a joint.

Now here is a guy that I’ve been watching and listening to my whole life. When I was a kid in the 70′s I looked forward to listening to Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton weeknights on CKEY (590 am before the Fan took it over.) And, of course, I used to watch him on Front Page Challenge. (Hey, I grew up in the country where we got about 6 channels, 3 of them CBC.) The man may have been Canada’s greatest historian, author of dozens of books and host of many T.V. specials, but what will most Canadians remember him for… Rolling a frikin’ joint on Rick Mercer’s show!

It got me to thinking that the old adage is true: It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in your life, you’re only remembered for the last thing you did. Don’t believe me? I’ll give you two quick examples. O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson. Now did you remember O.J.’s brilliant career as a running back for the Buffalo Bills? Maybe his acting in the Naked Gun series? Nope, you remember a white bronco driving slowly up an L.A. freeway. You remember a guy getting away with murder. How about Jacko? A cute kid making music with his brothers, The highest grossing singer of all time, or a baby swinging pedophile?

All of this brings me to Stephen Harper. If he were to die tomorrow (not that I’m hoping for that or anything) what would he be remembered for? Well my guess is that he would go down as the Pro-Bush, Republican toadie who did everything he could to block global action on climate change. Or perhaps he’d be remembered as the biggest control freak P.M. the country has ever had. Or maybe even as the biggest spending P.M. ever.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want my life summed up like that, and I’ll bet Mr. Harper wouldn’t either. So here’s some free advice for the P.M.:

Don’t do anything in life that you wouldn’t want to be remembered for. It may be the last thing that you do, and believe me, that’s all anyone will remember.

Oh, and thanks Pierre, before your help I never could roll a beauty J!