Even in the Boonies: Gay-bashing in the Mountains

Earlier this month, March 6th - 9th, the local ski hill hosted it's first ever gay pride ski weekend.

Yesterday, while at the gym, I happened to be reading through one of our local papers, which unfortunately doesn't have a web site (it's owned by CanWest Global and the site has been "under construction" for nearly two years now), and was startled to read that there is an RCMP hate crime investigation in progress as a result of some anti-gay signage that went up around that time, and the destruction of a banner on main street advertising the event. The newspaper article also said that there was a small protest by a local religious group during the weekend.

I was really surprised to hear this, not because I don't think there aren't any bigots around here, but because they mustn't have made much of an impact since the newpaper article was the first I'd heard of anything negative about that weekend. I saw no anti-gay posters and I wasn't aware that any religious group had held a protest. I have no idea who this religious group was, but as far as I'm aware, we only have three active churches in town (Catholic, United, and JW), whereas Trail (10km down the hill) has everything under the sun.

It's a shame, but I hope it doesn't deter this event from being held again next year, because I think it's a very cool idea.