Open letter to the Pearl and rebuttal from a board member

By Steve Tanner
Bonners Ferry

Dear Pearl Theater Directors; Heather Olson, Becky Revak, Serafina Dwyer, Jessica Tingley, Mike Weland and Carolyn Birrell.

I write the members of the Pearl Theater Board asking you to cancel the “Gay Pride” event (GPe) this month at the Pearl Theater. The Pearl’s objective as a nonprofit “is to foster and develop the artistic talents and skills of community members of all ages, to serve as an outreach to encourage and facilitate social activities and to nurture excellence in the performing arts…”

The GPe has little to do with art, artistic talents or activities that promote what is good and right in our community. The “gay pride” agenda is a national in-your-face parade of ignominy. Their aggressive actions demonstrate the “pride” agenda is at war with our heritage and community.

The Historic Pearl Theater was built for and long used in worship of God. The one book that directed that worship is the Bible, which is the foundational document of what is good and just and what is not. Darkness dominates the world without this standard. We are “endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights” which emanate from no other source; no right exists to steal, rape, rob, pillage, murder or promote the LBGT+ agenda. For men or women to claim to be transgender or 100+ genders is a lie, the abandonment of truth. By hosting this GPe, you become a promoter of the LBGT+ agenda.

Please cancel this event. If you fail to do so, the good people of this community will be encouraged to boycott the Pearl Theater and its sponsors.

An open rebuttal

By Mike Weland
Publisher/Pearl Board member

Thank you for sharing your point of view, Mr. Tanner. I beg you indulge me my response, both as publisher of 9B.News and as an individual who is honored to be on the Pearl Theater board, and with the caveat that I have not conferred with the other board members, and that the following opinion is solely my own.

I appreciate your point of view. I don’t share it. I think you make a few assumptions that are common but fundamentally flawed. As I often do, I’ll begin with a phrase that resonates with me, written by Thomas Jefferson, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It is the foundational idea upon which this nation’s constitution was written and the highest bar our species can aspire to reach … so high as to be nearly impossible, for it requires humanity to recognize, lay bare and strip away our innate but illogical perceptions of superiority, that I, my family, my tribe, my clan, my country are in some way better, wiser, stronger, more moral, more just than yours. That we know and perceive the truth while others don’t — hence they are inferior.

You assume that the upcoming GPe doesn’t represent art. I beg to differ … art is subjective, a reflection of the ideas and culture to which the artist belongs, sifted through the kaleidoscope of one’s limitless imagination as expressed in the sorely limited abilities of our physical attributes in the hope that our creation might convey a glimpse of who we are and what we are … an aspiration toward understanding why we are. That we don’t appreciate as art that from cultures we don’t belong to or know is understandable … it’s a reflection of our own limitations. Perhaps only God can truly appreciate art.

But whose God? Which perfect, omnipresent and omnipotent being conjured by the mind of man do we turn to? I can see your vote goes to the God you know and believe in, that you trust in His Bible drafted by the hands of men inspired by an entity no one has ever seen. It embodies as definitive to you what is good and just and what is not. And you have every right to so believe. But let’s parse that part you write after your mention of that line from the declaration of this nation’s independence; “no right exists to steal, rape, rob, pillage, murder or promote the LBGT+ agenda.”

Forgive me, but one of those items does not fit on that list, even if couched in a way to make it seems it does.

By common consensus, theft, rape, destruction of another’s property … each defined as crimes … are actions inimical to an orderly society. Such actions get in the way of people trying to get along with one another. Why? Because they are the actions by those who consider themselves stronger, whether of arm, intelligence, wealth or morality, taken with the intent of depriving someone they assume to be weaker of an asset, be it property, liberty, dignity or even life itself. In that last item on the list, you throw in “promote” because you needed a verb, but to promote is not a crime, promoting takes nothing from anyone. You are merely and improperly inserting your bias where it doesn’t fit, based on firm moral convictions to which you have every right.

But instead of declaring as wrong what someone does, you target as wrong who someone is, conveniently overlooking one self-evident truth — that all men, all people, are created equal.

Yes, I know you believe your Bible tells you that being possessed of the sexual inclination for anything other than the purpose of procreation is sinful, and your Bible may be correct, though I doubt it. By all means, live by the compass of your moral code. But the fact is that there are and always have been people of varying sexual preference, and it’s equally clear that their predilections are not by choice. Were I religious, I would be compelled to say they are as God meant them to be, no matter what the Arabs inspired by God may have written on their scrolls back when the Earth was in its infancy.

I remember seeing the images on the evening news in the 1960s of “Black Pride” marches, of marchers being beaten by white law enforcement officers, sprayed with fire hoses, torn by dogs set upon them. And I wondered why they marched, why they courted insult and injury, of being deprived of their liberty. In my house, my dad told me they deserved it, uppity as they were. They had it made when they had the good sense to know their place and stay in it.

It took me awhile and I’m not sure I yet fully understand it, for I am not of their race or their culture, but I think it boils down to those maddening but beautiful words of Thomas Jefferson, “all men are created equal.” All people are equal, entitled by their creator … not yours, not mine … to life, liberty. To pursue their ideal of happiness, not yours, not mine.

They are entitled to their dignity, and to demand it when denied.

Those who marched so steadfastly in the south didn’t go out march after march to have their heads bashed in, but to show the world the oppression they suffered year after year, decade after decade, century after century, at the hands of men who believed themselves superior.

Steve encapsulated why there will be a GPe event June 21-23 at the Pearl Theater in Bonners Ferry in a brief phrase fervently believed by far too many: “The ‘gay pride’ agenda is a national in-your-face parade of ignominy.”

No, Steve, there is no shame in standing up to demand one’s rights and one’s dignity … that’s the American way, the catalyst that compels us to keep striving to face and address our shortcomings, to keep at the hard and painful work necessary to ever perfect our union. If any shame attaches, it attaches to the bigoted, the intolerant. To those who will likely turn out to protest a group of people exercising their constitutional right to peaceful assembly and make a spectacle of it … and in so doing show the world just why they protest.

If any of them commit murder, molest a child, grope you or your goat inappropriately, rob a bank or the goat they molested and/or pay a surrogate for chaste missionary sex so as to produce a zygote and later use campaign funds to pay her to keep quiet while he-she-it runs for public office, by all means prosecute that gay lesbian transvestite homo to the fullest extent of law.

Otherwise, do unto them as you would have them do unto you — leave them alone. Live your life as you see fit and avail to them the same opportunity.