“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say” Martin Luther "My argument is not against the individual who claims to be gay and endeavours to keep their private life.. 'private.'  Instead, it is against 'gay activism' that is manipulating the political and educational systems in order to promote an extremely unhealthy, even lethal, lifestyle as normal and acceptable.  We don't teach our children to smoke or to do drugs, yet these activists tell them that it is totally normal and acceptable to have homosexual inclinations and encourages them to embrace this highly destructive and immoral lifestyle which has been proven to be deadlier than smoking and as deadly as a severe drug addiction." It was June of 2002 when I wrote the controversial letter to the editor (the letter is posted on the following website http://canadianpastor.blogspot.com).  I have no affiliation with the website.  I dare not link to it as the pro-gay thought police and their lackies are always watching.  I was employed as the Executive Director of the Upper Level Youth Centre, a 6000sqft multi-purpose Christian charitable organization that promoted Christian character and offered numerous life-skill, employability, recreational and other youth development programs.  The ULYC made over 150 contacts with Central Alberta teens on a weekly basis. Up until this point, I had served in a full-time ministry capacity as both a youth and associate pastor since 1997.   I had travelled extensively within Canada and the US consulting for Christian para-church orghanizations that had a predominantly at-risk youth focus combined with ministering to these youth and gang members while doing so.  Without doubt, I am passionate about reaching spiritually lost youth.  Youth that have lost or have never had a foothold in life. Young people that have become disinterested with school and other productive activities resulting in no vision for their future. Hope, security, self-esteem and direction are day by day, even moment by moment pursuits for these young people. For them, emotional survival becomes a lifestyle and their very existence questionable, void of meaning, and purpose. While often depressed, they struggle to find a reason to carry on. I have shed countless tears over youth that fit this description.  I, like many other inter-city missionaries, have given my last dollar so they would not go hungry.  I have personally lived with over two dozen teens regardless of their sexual orientation, their beliefs or any other charateristic as long as it did not put another teen at risk of harm.  I have given them my clothes, my time and my love.  Unfortunately, I have also witnessed the consequences that many of these young people face due to a void of responsible parenting or parental abuse in their lives combined with their own poor choices. I have witnessed countless success stories but I have also performed teen memorial services after suicide, drug overdose and other unnecessary tragedies.  I have been hand in hand with a young person terrified after receiving the new that they have Hepatitis C and worse.  I have prayed at a hospital bedside looking upon a child with tubes stuck down their throat in an attempt to keep them breathing.  I have shared the tears of their mothers and fathers due to feelings of hopelessness about the very fate of their children.  The letter to the editor in question was written because of my very love and concern for these young people and their families....including my own.  I do not regret it.  I stand behind every word of it.  Unfortunately, it is more true today then when published by the Red Deer Advocate back in 2002. Not all at-risk youth are criminals and drug addicts.  Though I did specialize with this very high risk category, most of the at-risk youth that I worked with lived at home, often in a single parent family, were still in school and had little involvement with the justice system.  Many of these youth were Latchkey Kids and the lack of mentoring in their daily lives resulted in them being hyper impressionable and desperate for acceptance.  Our cities are saturated with young people that feel this way. They are filled with potential but the unfortunate fact remains, unless they are mentored by loving people in a stable, affirming, moral environment, where they are guided and encouraged to pursue their best, they will remain lost and continue to spiral hopelessly downward.  Every young person, every human being for that matter, deserves to know that they are loved, valuable and needed.  Yes even the homosexuals...of course!  They also deserve to know the truth and there can be no true love without the truth.  The two cannot be separated.  The immorality of our society is dumbing down young people, leaving them in the grey with very little direction.  More than ever, today's young people need to know the clear difference between right and wrong.  I refuse to be complacent and watch young people suffer while not knowing such. I simply wrote a passionate Letter to the Editor of my local newspaper in the midst of an ongoing national debate about gay marriage, the 'gay agenda' and their goal to have 'sexual orientation' added to Canadian hate crimes laws.  My community was not immune to the tactics of this agenda.  In 2002, Darren Lund was a teacher at Lindsay Thurber High School in Red Deer.  While teaching there, he invited a pro-gay minister into his so called tolerance program to teach the pro-homosexual view of the Bible?  He did not provide his teenage students with an equal opportunity to hear a presentation from a minister that held an opposing view?  In addition, the same Alberta Human Rights Commission that welcomed Lund's complaint against me and subsequently found me guilty, was using your tax dollars to fund the pro-gay Alberta P-Flag Faith Society's initiative to teach children that homosexuality is "normal, necessary, acceptable and productive and has been for thousands of years?"  Their position was obvious.  In the midst of this national debate, I was not going to remain silent in my community.  I worked with young people that often expressed how the agenda was being forced upon them or gave evidence of the same by the way they conducted themselves.   My letter was far from a baseless rant, it was intentional.  Actually, I had no way of knowing if it would be published and less than two months after it was, I was served with a AHRC complaint submitted by Dr. Darren Lund, a pro-gay activist and now University of Calgary faculty member.  Like I said in my 2002 letter, "War has been declared."2 Cor 10:4 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Romans 12:9   Eph 5:11   Matt 5:10