From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Borderland Pride will donate one-third of the financial compensation paid to us by the municipality directly to the Emo Public Library, on the condition that it host a drag story time event, free to all to attend, on a date of our choosing this year.

An Ontario Human Rights Tribunal fined the small Ontario town of Emo (population 1,200) $15,000 for refusing to fly the “pride flag” four years ago in June 2020. Borderland Pride, a small LGBT activist, sued the town and Emo Mayor Harold McQuaker — 10 grand will have to be forked over by the township, and five grand by McQuaker himself. In short, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decided that elected officials have a legal obligation to express support for an ideological movement regardless of what their constituents think of that fact.

As I noted earlier, the worst part is not even the forced cash payouts — it is the fact that both the mayor and the chief administrative officer of the Emo municipality were ordered to complete a “Human Rights 101” course “offered” by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal within 30 days. In other words, the mayor and CAO are being forced to take a re-education class so that the next time the LGBT activists show up and demand something (and there’s always a next time), they’ll know their job is to do what they are told.

As Ontario adjudicator Karen Dawson wrote in her decision: “I find that $15,000 is an appropriate level of compensation for Borderland Pride’s injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect.” Having seen a few “Pride” celebrations, I’d say that the primary damages to “dignity” and “self-respect” are done by the LGBT activists themselves — but it is extraordinary that the adjudicator didn’t even bother to pretend that she wasn’t penalizing the mayor and small town of Emo for hurting the feelings of LGBT activists.

The fact that small towns are being targeted by LGBT activists isn’t an accident by the way. It is part of a strategy. I know of small towns in the prairies where LGBT activists demanded a “Pride” parade and then drove in participants from larger cities to make sure there were enough people for a parade. They like to force their agenda on small towns in rural areas in particular because they want to confront those who do not share their beliefs — and they know they have the power to do so. Here is how this grift generally unfolds.

1. LGBT activists insist that everybody fly the LGBT flag to overtly announce support for their ideology.
2. Some institutions decline to fly this flag for reasons ranging from religious to community unity.
3. LGBT activists then characterize this refusal to pro-actively show support for their agenda as a “backlash.” Canadian media obediently characterizes it as such. LGBT activists are now “victims” of their targets’ refusal to participate in the narrative they themselves have created.

Which is precisely how the CBC covered this story by the way. The headline should have been “Small town mayor ordered to take re-education camp after declining to fly LGBT flag on government property” or “Small town bullied by LGBT activists.” It was: “Ontario Human Rights Tribunal fines Emo Township for refusing Pride proclamation.” Notice the wording: The aggression, this headline implies, comes from those “refusing Pride proclamation” rather than those demanding a “Pride” proclamation. That wording is no accident.

LGBT activists are good at this game. Most municipalities choose to fold without protest when the rainbow mafia makes its demands — “nice little township you have there, it’d be a shame if we smeared it in the national press.” If you think I’m exaggerating, take a moment to skim-read Borderland Pride’s “Open Letter” of April 5, 2024 (all bolded sections theirs). I am including this letter in its entirely to highlight their tactics:

Dear Mayor and Council:

Re:  Final Settlement Proposal

In June, our complaint about your bigoted and discriminatory decision to refuse to recognize Pride Month in 2020 will proceed to a full hearing on its merits before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The hearing is scheduled for 5 days. Our legal team will be ready.

Our proceeding at the Tribunal is based in case law that has been settled in Ontario for 30 years. We cautioned you about this at the outset of this saga in May 2020 – after you made your ill-advised decision and we asked you to reconsider. In other words: you face an uphill battle in this hearing, and are likely going to lose and be ordered to pay significant compensation to us and the other complainants for violating the Human Rights Code.

Even if you do win (which is a very remote possibility, and one we would likely seek judicial review of), you cannot recover your legal costs at the Tribunal. We imagine that your lawyers have already told you this. It is unclear why you are not heeding that advice, especially after losing your motion to have our claim against the individual council members dismissed.

Emo taxpayers must understand that you have now spent tens of thousands of dollars of their money on exorbitant legal fees to defend the homophobia and transphobia of Harold McQuaker, Harrold Boven, and Warren Toles. Despite those significant expenditures, it is unclear what has been paid for given the very limited material that has been served on us to-date. All of this is an inexcusable and foolish waste of taxpayer money at a time when your council is also hiking taxes and cutting local services.

Specifically, this is playing out while your council is soliciting public donations to keep the lights on at its public library, including accepting handouts from the local food bank. You’ve also hemorrhaged taxpayer money to pay for other discrimination around the council table — such as the six-figure pay equity sum owing after it was determined that you had been underpaying women on your staff for decades. And if Mr. McQuaker’s comments around the community are to be believed, that isn’t even the only workplace settlement you have had to cough up lately.

One would think that a small municipality with a small tax base that finds itself in a hole like this would stop digging. But here we are, on the eve of Emo being added to the list of homophobic towns in publicly reported Tribunal decisions, and you are still scratching your heads wondering why the municipality can’t entice new medical professionals to live and work there. It is breathtaking that you have not connected the dots between your defence of anti-2SLGBTQIA+ bigotry and its damage to the public image of your community. Your untenable legal position is simply worsening your municipality’s other challenges.

We sympathize with the hard-working members of the community who are watching this car accident in slow motion. That’s why, despite that you have rebuffed all prior efforts to settle on reasonable terms, we want to offer a final off-ramp from this impending national public relations tire fire for your council and community. We are even willing to pitch in to support the municipality in its time of need.

Here’s our proposal:

1. You will agree to the settlement terms extended to you by our legal counsel at Cambridge LLP in March 2022, including the published apology, financial compensation (reduced from what we will seek from the Tribunal), diversity and inclusion training for council, and a commitment to adopt Pride proclamations in the future without stripping out their 2SLGBTQIA+-affirming language.
2. Borderland Pride will donate one-third of the financial compensation paid to us by the municipality directly to the Emo Public Library, on the condition that it host a drag story time event, free to all to attend, on a date of our choosing this year.
3. Borderland Pride will, before the end of 2024, host its next charitable drag event in Emo, the proceeds of which will support the Emo Public Library. The municipality will provide facilities for this event at no charge.

This is a good deal. You should take it. The alternative is to continue to waste taxpayer money fighting a losing battle in defence of bigotry and hate. That path will be embarrassing for your municipality and council, not to mention all of those with ties to your community and who expect better from its leadership.

Look at it this way: can you really demand that your voters pay more in taxes and offer up donations to support basic municipal services while also refusing an offer that could generate revenue and end your litigation bills? If this crusade of yours isn’t really about your prejudice and contempt for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, we look forward to your acceptance of our terms, which can be transmitted to our legal counsel at Cambridge LLP.

This offer remains open until May 3, 2024.

Sincerely,

BORDERLAND PRIDE

Douglas W. Judson (he/him)

Co-Chair/Director

Notice here, that not giving in to LGBT demands is portrayed as proactive aggression. Judson refers to the council declining to endorse his ideology as a “crusade,” when it is obvious to any clear-minded observer that the crusade is his. Additionally, Judson has a second trick up his sleeve — bring drag queens into the local library to read to kids, and we’ll even give you some of the money we extorted to pay for it! Again, this is smart strategy — but it should be recognized for what it is. The LGBT movement wants every small town in the country to overhaul its operations in line with their ideology. They know how to get what they want, too.

Jonathon Van Maren

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

“There is evidence that fluoride exposure has been associated with the diseases [and] disorders that RFK listed, but with caveats”

Water fluoridation has returned to the forefront of public policy debates thanks to environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is expected to have a role in the Department of Health and Human Services, giving his opinion more weight than ever.

In a post to X, Kennedy wrote, “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

The post links to a High Wire video interview with lawyer Michael Connett, lead attorney in a successful case against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Last September, Obama-appointed District Court Judge Edward Chen sided with Connett and mandated the EPA to more strictly regulate water fluoridation.

Chen’s ruling states, “In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water…”

Fluoride is a poisonous industrial byproduct, handled in its pure form by people in hazmat suits. Dealing with sodium fluoroacetate was an expense for the Aluminum Company of America before Edward Bernays helped turn it into a profitable venture. In the 1940s, Bernays, the father of modern public relations and nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, used mass psychology and public health advocates to have fluoride put in drinking water. Fluoridation opponents were dismissed as kooks ever after.

The toxicology adage “The dose makes the poison” applies. Chemicals, including drugs, can benefit health in some respects but undermine it in others. Unfortunately, recent analysis suggests the “side effects” of fluoridation may outweigh its alleged benefits.

A recent analysis by Cochrane Reviews said water fluoridation may provide a slight dental benefit, but less so since the mid 70’s when manufacturers commonly added fluoride to toothpaste. Fluoride reverses or stops early tooth decay by remineralizing teeth, making them stronger. It also reduces bacteria’s ability to make acids that cause decay.

Fluoride capsules have little effect on teeth, which suggests its main positive effect is topical (meaning by direct contact). An obvious question follows: if fluoride of roughly one part per million passing over the teeth before swallowing, what is its effect during digestion or bodily storage? After all half of fluoride is passed through urine, while the remainder is stored in the body.

In 2020 The Institute of Technology and Business in the Czech Republic made a six-article issue dedicated to the mechanisms of fluoride toxicity. One explained in the abstract that “fluoride is an enzymatic poison, inducing oxidative stress, hormonal disruptions, and neurotoxicity.” The toxic effects were magnified when trace amounts of aluminum were present, and “might contribute to unexpected epidemics in the future.”

Sleeplessness, hypothyroidism, and autism to conditions linked to fluoride consumption, whether through natural sources or water fluoridation. The risks were found through statistical studies comparing health issues in water fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, biochemical analysis, and human and animal studies.

“We concur with the conclusions of many authors over the world that fluoride neurotoxicity is a serious risk associated with elevated fluoride exposure… […] Fluoride toxicity is a slow, hidden process. Evolving evidence should inspire scientists and health authorities to re-evaluate claims about the safety of fluoride…”

In 2019, researchers from Canadian and U.S. universities tested over 500 Canadian women throughout their pregnancies for fluoride levels in their urine. Their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that for each milligram of fluoride per litre in the mother’s urine, IQ dropped 4.5 points in their male children tested at ages of three to four years.

Christine Till, a professor in the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto, told CNN, “At a population level, that’s a big shift. That translates to millions of IQ levels lost.”

Ashley Malin, an assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Epidemiology Department, had similar findings in her Florida study, published in JAMA in 2024.

“There is evidence that fluoride exposure has been associated with the diseases [and] disorders that RFK listed, but with caveats,” Malin told the Virginia Mercury in a recent article.

“Aside from fluoride’s impacts on neurodevelopment, I think that there is more that we don’t know about health effects of low-level fluoride exposure than what we do know, particularly for adult health outcomes,” Malin added.

In August, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the United States found that fluoride levels higher than 1.5 mg/L (the highest acceptable level in Canada) are associated with lower IQs in children. The NTP said there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there are similar risks at the recommended level of 0.7 mg/L.

Montreal recently ended its water fluoridation and hopefully other cities will follow. Only a misguided nanny state would poison young minds and old bones for the sake of people who don’t brush their teeth.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.