SUBMITTED BY BEN BARTEL, NOTL.
OPINION

Dear editor:

After reading John Boydell’s letter of June 27, 2019, I looked up the word abhor in several dictionaries.

One of them defined abhor as synonymous to hate. That would suggest you direct hate toward an identifiable group known as Mennonites.

In Canada, a country you should be thankful to live in, what you produced is known as “hate speech” and it is a crime here.

For someone like yourself, who has fought against discrimination and intolerance all your life, I’m surprised you can dish it out so freely.

Your attitude demonstrates that you do not deserve the respect you are seeking.

But God loves ya!

Ben Bartel

NOTL

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Editor’s note: The Lake Report is pleased to publish a wide variety of opinions on its letters and opinion pages. Not everyone will agree with other readers’ opinions, but the letters pages are a forum for people in our community to have their say about issues that concern them.

We do not believe the letter by John Boydell was hate speech, but rather a strong opinion about his lived experience, specific religious practices he is against and the organizations responsible for those practices.

While some readers have expressed their strong disagreement with Boydell’s letter, and with his objections to some of the Mennonite and Catholic churches’ ideas related to gays and lesbians, many of those same readers said both religious organizations are now far more accepting of homosexuality.

Not everyone feels that way.

The Lake Report received a number of virulent letters that were not suitable for publication because of the language used. We also received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as a Mennonite resident of NOTL who spoke in extremely foul ways about gays and lesbians. Plainly, some people have evolved and are more accepting of others, while others have not.