Sunday, February 2, 2014

Children: A Lost Priority



Many of you have no doubt heard of the tenancy problems at the MacFarland building in Lethbridge. The problem is wider than reported in the local media, and involves two widely disparate tenancies invited to locate next to each other.

On one side is a children’s music program that runs into the evening hours and the other side of a thin wall is a sexually liberated straight and gay theatre, with rehearsals and public performances taking place—also in the evenings.

The landlord of this building must be either naive or desperate to juxtapose these two tenants, who are at extreme opposite ends of the sexual scale—young children and sexually explicit performers—where sounds from one side permeate the other.

Unfortunately, the theatre saw the problem as “homophobic,” and angrily responded in every media to a complaint from the children’s music program. By considering it as anti-gay, their response has sadly buried the basic problem.

The problem is not homosexuality, but a public adult program of sexuality—of any variety—inappropriately practiced adjacent to a program involving young children. Straight or gay, the theatre is free to rehearse and play its performances, but not within hearing proximity to minors.

One would have hoped that the theatre would have been more sensitive to the presence of the adjacent children than the perceived attack on themselves. The impression they leave is that tolerance for its openness to sexual practices should trump the needs of young children.

But, perhaps, as abortion continues to confirm that children are disposable, we shouldn’t be surprised.