Expect Abuse When You Speak the Truth

MercatorNet has a "creative commons" republication policy - nearly all of our articles may be reproduced so long as the original source is acknowledged. This is what Rebekah Hebbert, the managing editor of a Canadian site based at McGill University, the Prince Arthur Herald, did with a recent article on same-sex adoption by Rick Fitzgibbons. (She is also an occasional contributor.)

Rebekah Hebbert

The outcome was explosive. At least four editors and ten writers resigned from the staff and Rebekah appeared on national television explaining her decision to run what was described by her critics as garbage and bigotry.

I trawled through the comments, mostly abusive. My favourite was "'Adults do not have a right to deprive children of a father or a mother.' This is actually considered an argument by the author of this piece. This is actually a thing that got published. I don't even know where to begin."

I don't know where to begin either. Do Canadian university students regard the normality of homosexual relationships as an article of faith and the need for a mother and a father as a vile heresy? Perhaps so. Rebekah's impression was that her colleagues had resigned because of fears that their careers would be tainted by homophobia.

It looks as though MercatorNet needs to publish more well-researched, temperate, and hard-hitting articles on same-sex marriage. Congratulations to Rebekah for her fearless and controversial stand. If her colleagues are looking for a consensus-friendly working environment, there may be vacancies writing copy for the Korean News in Pyongyang. As another Canadian gadfly, John Kenneth Galbraith, once wrote: "one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."
 
 
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