Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

The Venetian Nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin’s Dead Lagoon: ”There can be no true friends without true enemies; unless we hate what we are not, than we cannot love what we are.”

Truro Nova Scotia Mayor Bill Mills may not use the word “hate” — that would get him into trouble — but certainly exclusion is a term that he would embrace. In Truro, you see, you are not welcome if you are gay — goes against scripture according to Mills.

The gay community asked to have their rainbow flag raised on municipal property, and around town, as part of their summer festivities. No dice, according to the city fathers.

Mills was quoted as saying, “If I have a group of people that say that pedophiles have rights, do we raise their flag too?” Then he backs away from such hate-mongering invidiousness and says, disingenuously, “I don’t want to lump homosexuals in with pedophiles (even though he did), but that’s the point, the issues, that’s my feeling”.

That’s like me saying that I would never call Bill Mills a rural religious red neck.

Even on religious grounds, there are powerful counter-arguments in favor of New Testament forgiveness and understanding.

Here is the crux of the matter: gays are born that way. Studies regarding fetal hormonal exposure and genetic pre-determinants pretty much guarantee it is science over socializing. Who, may I ask, would choose to be gay?  Who would want the hassle, the lack of putative social support, and then have to deal with a clown like Bill Mills anyway?

If my brother had his choice, I know that he would have chosen to have had a straight lifestyle and would have wanted more of a family. My brother was married for ten years and is a gay man. He is more productive than millions of “straights.” He also employs lots of people. A real man in other words, unlike a prejudiced small town mayor.

Gays have been their own worst enemies, too, in terms of how they have branded themselves following the advent of protective civil rights laws. As I have mentioned before, hyper-sexual displays of homo-eroticism do not play well — in many places, not just rural Canada.

Statistical facts are, however, that mayor Mills probably has gay people in his family, or one of his ancestors was gay. Who cares?

Truro Mayor Mills exhibits the same kind of thinking, the same sensibility that has, historically, kept Jews and others down, out, and excluded.

When the wind blows off of the pastures in Truro it smells an awful lot like Bill Mills and Truro council.

No wonder so many people move from Truro to Halifax.