Testimonies
On June 4th 2019, Pastor David Lynn was arrested by police for peacefully gathering and preaching the gospel in public in Toronto’s famous Church-Wellesley Village neighborhood where many of the LGBTQ community reside. There is a live video stream where you can see that the Pastor was preaching about love and returning to christ, and yet the more love he poured out into his preaching the more hate was spewed at him. He professed how he hates no one and that we are all sinners he says quote, ““Jesus died for the sinner…. Every heterosexual has sin. Every homosexual has sin. Sin is when we violate the laws of God…. (Hoffman, 2019)”. However, people began to create a mob around him and started to get increasingly aggressive, not letting him move or get away. They used their bodies to press up against him and block him off when he’d try to leave which in actuality is considered assault and when the police were called instead of those using force to block the Pastor getting arrested, the police found Lynn to be the cause of disturbance despite his explanation of the assault. They explained that despite him not being in violation of any law, they said he should not be using amplification. So Pastor Lynn proceeded to preach without said amplification but still was arrested for disturbing the peace (Hoffman, 2019).
Author of this article David Hoffman so eloquently states the importance of this event;
“It is a gross violation against free speech, and it shows any Christian a precursor of what persecution could look like in the future.Here in North America, we are in a serious battle for rights that we have taken for granted. There are groups, organizations, and individuals that want to make certain types of free speech illegal. Pastor Lynn’s arrest is nothing short of a violation of his right to free speech. He was not inciting anyone to violence, and neither was he being defamatory. He was preaching the gospel. He was preaching that Jesus Christ came to die for the salvation of sinners. In spite of this, he received harsh protest which ended in his arrest. This should greatly concern any Christian.Pastor David Lynn was arrested for a message of love, healing, and hope, all of which can only be found in the person of Christ. As Christians, we need to take this as a wake-up call. Our rights and liberties are on the brink of being removed in the coming years. Now is the time to have a voice. We cannot afford to remain silent (Hoffman, 2019).”
A man in Vancouver was denied in appeal court the ability as the child's parent, to stop their child’s gender transition. The father filed in court to argue that his 13 year old daughter at the time who started feeling these feelings at age 11, should not be provided treatment without his permission or approval as her legal guardian.
The courts ruled (which was appealed) that his unacceptance to call his daughters by her “appropriate pronouns” and except her transition was in the threshold of “family violence”.
However, judges ruled that the father must address his daughter as he does in public and can only address her by her biological pronouns to close friends and family. They consider the father to be the one who is destroying their loving parent-child relationship and not the government who takes children away from parents and provides gender changing surgery and hormone blockers to underaged children with taxpayer money.
Gu (a member of The Cross Church):
“I emailed my child's school to send an exemption form so my child could be taken out from their sexual education class. Despite emailing in advance I received no response nor was I given a notice which the school is obligated to give. Due to this lack of knowledge my child went to school on that very day and when she asked her teacher if she could be exempt from going to the sex education class,
my child was humiliated in in the middle of the classroom in front of all her peers by her teacher ridiculed and yelled out for wishing to not partake. The teacher yelled at my child and forced her to partake. My daughter was not only embarrassed in front of all her friends but was confused as to why she was ridiculed by her teacher for asking such a request. This was a very traumatic experience for her and she received significant psychological shock and finds herself unable to stand up for what she believes in due to the backlash she received”