To the Editor,
The weekend of June 28 and since, it has come to the attention to many in the area that Brock Bergey (City Clerk and Treasurer of Canton) was attacked by a resident of Canton, who did not like to conform to one of Canton’s city ordinances. He struck out in a most hateful way, letting everyone on his Facebook know that Brock is gay, using the most offensive of language.
Within a couple of days this made the Rochester TV news.
So my question is: how do we, the citizens of this area and county respond?
In this day (2020) no one should be taunted with any racial, sexual or religiously hateful terms.
All towns, businesses, churches, etc. could have explicit signs, or towns pass ordinances that point out, “we welcome everyone.”
We can stop excusing and using hate speech.
Anti-gay jokes aren’t funny; they are hurtful. They stupidly reinforce the lie that straight people are superior to everyone else. That’s why I stopped telling those jokes. It didn’t happen overnight, but with time I was successful. It was a habit I had learned, so I could un-learn it.
As a Quaker, we believe that there is that of the divine in every human being and it follows that there is no reason to treat people differently.
This is an ancient problem, which I believe has shown some improvement in my lifetime. I would like to see a great leap forward in the very near future in our culture, which would show that we are accepting of every human being as an equal.
In Hope,
Harvey Benson
Harmony, Minn.
P.S. The good news is, that the vast majority of Facebook responses supported Brock.
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