You can dress it up and camouflage it all you want but a pig is still a pig.
A rainbow crosswalk painted in our town is a group of youth who followed the legal channels and proper procedures to accomplish a goal of importance to them. They were not out painting graffiti or vandalizing property or hurting other citizens physically or mentally.
A petition started immediately after a failed attempt to stop the rainbow crosswalk that is designed to ban all attempts of such actions with a town bylaw is a bullying direct attack against a specific group of our youth who have committed no crime.
I highly doubt that the idea of our community desperately needing a bylaw to protect us from crosswalk painting was born out of a need for such bylaw but rather I suspect based on the timing, the parties openly advocating for it and the rhetoric around it that it was born out of a dislike for the rainbow crosswalk and its painters.
The organizers and promotors of said bylaw are indeed following the proper procedures to achieve their ultimate goal but I suggest that all of you take a very careful and honest look at your motivation. Is it indeed something designed to improve our community or is it a vendetta against those who do not share your particular beliefs? Will it actually benefit all citizens or will it further segregate a segment of our society that is already often ostracized and bullied? At a time when our entire society is supposedly working on inclusion and understanding why would we in Westlock feel the need to have a somewhat unique bylaw protecting us from having crosswalks painted by those whom we don’t understand or agree with?
Might I suggest to you that when you take that honest and real look into what you are doing in our community there may well be some positive and useful things to direct these extensive energies to that could perhaps benefit all of our youth.
To our elected officials who have been dragged into this fiasco, I would ask that you consider the fact that although they may have garnered 700 signatures on their grossly misrepresented attack petition there are many more of us who turned them away at the door. We are the silent majority who until now have not bothered to expend time and energy on this subject but I for one can no longer sit silently by watching any of our youth being so blatantly bullied.
Marvin Wieler, Westlock
