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Targeted For Hate

By Michael Coren
Sun Media July 5, 2003
(Re-published with permission of the author)

I certainly didn't intend to write about the issue of homosexuality and gay
activism this week, but events have rather forced my hand. Perhaps now those
people who speak and write interminably about the intolerance of those of us
who are opposed to gay marriage and the like will think again.

Let me stress that what you are about to read does not represent the
majority mindset of the gay community, and it was a gay man who brought it
to my attention, with fears for me and my family.

A gay man, by the way, who disagrees with me on gay issues and with whom I
have enjoyed an intelligent and mutually respectful debate over the
Internet. He received an e-mail, one that had been sent to numerous gay men
and women. It reads thus:

"I just LOVE Michael Coren (NOT!) ... Witness his vile spew on the Web:
http://www.lifesite.net/coren/ http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/coren.html .

Witness his vile spew on HIS site: http://www.michaelcoren.com . Contact the
source of the vile spewing: By e-mail (please send 10,000 blank emails
first) - info@michaelcoren.com spurs@ionsys.com .

In person (please ring the doorbell at 3.00 A.M.) or by snail mail (please
send a bag of dog s..t with your letter" ... at which point my full home
address is given.

"By phone (please phone at 3.00 A.M.)"... at which point my home number is
given. And then people are asked to send "10,000 sheets of black or navy
paper" to my fax machine. The e-mail concludes: "Have fun, WM. P.S. Does he
not look just a TAD like a Nazi skinhead?"

This so-called Nazi skinhead just buried his Jewish father, a man whose
family escaped Poland shortly before the Holocaust. But personal abuse is
irrelevant. Think on the rest, however. Large numbers of people are being
told, in the name of tolerance, to send germ-laden excrement through the
mail to a man, his wife and their four young children, one only five years
old. No guarantee can ever be made with a five-year-old that she won't open
a parcel because, well, because it's a parcel.

Because my mother is suffering from advanced dementia and other ailments, I
have to take calls at any time of the night because bad news is always a
possibility. So now I may rush to the phone expecting the worst about mum,
to discover it's just a crank. My children awakened, my wife's sleep broken.

There is also the implicit threat of other things happening to my home and
property. Do I allow my children to walk to a corner store now? Do I take
special precautions, or allow my son to go to school on his own? (Remember,
gay activists stormed and defaced a Cathedral in Montreal and threw condoms
around.)

It's interesting that I've prefaced almost everything I've said about the
gay issue with a call for respect and dignity for everyone concerned. I've
condemned anti-gay extremists and even taken some heat for being too
conciliatory. Those critics are wrong, though.

A faith-based critique of homosexuality is no longer faith-based when it is
any way hateful.

I'm not going to pretend this e-mail was unique.

In details, yes, but not in tone. But I take comfort in the number of gay
people whom I know and with whom I work. They might argue with me, but they
do not hate. And they know the same of me. But the haters within that
community are more than a handful.

Look, I'm one of the least favourite people of, for example, Canadian
Holocaust deniers, but even they don't give out my address and phone number
and ask their people to send me dog waste and to harass me and my family.

I would expect a member of the gay community to inform me of the identity of
this person so he can be dealt with by the authorities. I would certainly
expect a mass condemnation of the action. In the name of law, morality and
of good old tolerance.

By the way, I shall not hate in response and I shall certainly forgive.
Indeed, if this person were to offer an apology I would accept it. The same
faith that tells me to stand firm for certain virtues also tells me to
oppose hatred with the contrary.

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