Well, a little more has happened in Nova Scotia since then. First, to the credit of the citizens of Truro, a number of them got together to peacefully protest their town council's stance:
People who attended the rally were particularly miffed with the Truro's Mayor Bill Mills, who cited his Christian beliefs as his reason for voting against the move.
"The mayor of Truro has embarrassed a lot of Christians by interpreting the bible in a very unfavourable way," said Rev. David Fletcher, an Anglican priest. "If we want to shout bible passages back and forth, my bible bullet would come from Galatians in Chapter 3, where St. Paul says that in Christ, there is no more exclusion."
Of course this hasn't stopped the unhinged from coming out of their caves and howling at the moon. Apparently, some unfortunate woman shares the same name as one of the rally's organizers, and was treated some amazingly abusive telephone calls:
"It was from a female and I believe it came from Halifax because of the number that showed up on my phone," Ms. Farrell said. "The message she left wasn’t very pleasant. She said things like being gay is a deadly sin, that I should be ashamed of myself for organizing the rally.
"I was so shocked by its tone and its message that I deleted it right away. I was also baffled about the two calls because I didn’t know anything about a (gay-rights) rally or a dispute between the local gay community and the town."
It wasn’t until she received the third phone call that she learned about the rally from the female caller, who told her about the story that appeared in Monday’s edition of The Chronicle Herald and outlined the other Ms. Farrell’s work to hold the rally.
"When I told her she had the wrong person, it didn’t seem to matter. She was still looking for information. It got to the point that we were talking over each other. It was an exasperating phone call because I don’t tolerate people yelling at me on the phone. I finally told her she had the wrong person and hung up."
Wow, the "family values" crowd comes out again and shows us all just how ugly they can really be. It's sad, really. These people are operating on the basis of so much misinformation and mythology that they have no idea who and what they are talking about. It's rather sad that some of these people get themselves so worked up that they can't even listen when the person they have telephoned tells them "you got the wrong number"!
To give Ms. Farrell credit, she didn't just let the phone calls go, but instead contacted her namesake:
Ms. Farrell then sent the other Sharon Farrell, the rally organizer, a message on her Facebook account in which she detailed the calls. They later met at the rally.
"I was very impressed with her. She is very sincere and she was aghast that anyone would go to such great lengths to get a phone number or to make phone calls like that. I was impressed by her stand. It got me involved."
This is the other side of the coin to what I wrote about last time. When you come to meet people that you have often thought of as "Other", you learn that they are just people like anybody else - and very seldom are they deserving of the kind of bile that is so often flung at GLBT people.
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