Dear Editor:
Over the last number of years I have noticed that the Wellington Advertiser is often very biased when relating issues within the community.
For example, the Advertiser often heavily shamed anyone who made the choice not to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. Rather than “chasing down” both sides they did what was easiest: follow the masses and pretend that shaming and denying the unvaccinated their Charter rights was “educating them.”
The latest bias is against Christians. The front page story of Jan. 19 (Local company receives threats, harassment over planned drag show) included Mr. Van Vliet’s opinion that the anonymous messages he received were from Christians. Exactly how does anonymous and Christian go hand in hand?
There are many people – Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Agnostic, Atheist, etc. – who are concerned about drag shows and the damage they can do to children. For someone to mention this they do not have to be Christian.
I don’t have that particular paper anymore and I can’t recall what all the comments were. There were some comments however that were not written by someone who tries to live a Christ-like life. In other words, if they call themselves a Christian (and again we don’t know as it was anonymous) then they may want to study what Christ has to say about the sanctity of human life and how God hates a murderer.
The article also states police take hate crime very seriously. Hate crime should be taken seriously. In light of the seriousness of hate crime, how is it that Mr. Van Vliet and the newspaper (which could have omitted Mr. Van Vliet’s opinion) were allowed to spread this message of hate against Christians and not be held accountable?
Catharina DeWitt,
Arthur
*Editor’s note: COVID-19 vaccines, associated mandates and the coverage of those topics in this newspaper did not violate “Charter rights.” The drag show article never states all the social media comments about the show were anonymous (they were not). The article mentions only far-right Christians; there was no “message of hate” expressed towards Christians. And the show in question did not target children.