The Residents of 11054 - 86 Avenue are Bigots

Yesterday at about 7:30pm, my girlfriend and I were walking along 111 Street en route to the Garneau Safeway. This neighbourhood is on the doorstep of the University of Alberta campus. It is usually peaceful and pleasant.

We passed a large house where an end-of-year celebration was going on. There were lots of trucks parked out front, and in the yard, a hot tub set up, and eager young men arriving for some beer-soaked revelry.

Over the entrance to the hot tub was a handmade sign. It said:

NO FAGS.

This could only be interpreted as a warning to homosexuals. My girlfriend and I continued walking, now with considerable consternation about what we'd just seen. We wondered what should be done. We wondered whether the house in question belonged to a fraternity, in which case, it would be of considerable concern to the university itself.

In my books, a sign saying NO FAGS is akin to a sign saying NO NIGGERS. Only of course, the fratboys would never have affixed a sign saying NO NIGGERS. In most cases, they actually like black people. But homosexuals, they do not like.

Eventually, I decided that I would inform the police of the NO FAGS sign. We were not sure if they would do anything about it. We weren't sure if posting a NO FAGS sign is even illegal. But it seemed worthwhile at least inquiring.

Before going to the police, we returned to the scene of the crime with a camera. I furtively took two photos of the NO FAGS sign. I also confirmed that the house belongs to the FH fraternity. I have since looked this up on the Internet, and it would appear that FH stands for the "Farm House" fraternity, of which there are 30 chapters in North Amercica.

Having thus gathered some evidence, we drove to the police station. On the way, we happened to spot a couple of officers sitting in Starbucks. I joked to my girlfriend:

"If the police tell us that they're too busy for this, we'll say, 'No you're not, two of your officers are having coffee at Starbucks!'"

It turned out that the police station was closed. So the officers at Starbucks were, in fact, our only hope. We approached them tentatively. They listened to the details with considerable concern. They seemed to take it very seriously. We departed feeling triumphant. The police said they'd go down to the frat house and sort things out.

After dinner, at about 9:45pm, we passed the frat house again. The sign was still up. It was even more visible, in fact, because there were festive lights surrounding it. It was a glow-in-the-dark symbol of bigotry.

We went to Muddy Waters Cafe. I calmed my nerves with some red wine. I felt murderously angry by this point.

But something must have happened while we were in the cafe. Scarcely thirty minutes later, we went by the frat house a third and final time, and lo and behold, the sign was gone, and the party had ended. There was not a fratboy in sight. The entire residence was completely deserted.

In some places, prosperity fuels growing urbanization, sophistication and cultural awareness. In Alberta, it fuels avarice, aggression, and cruelty. The Edmonton of 2007 is a far meaner place than the economically becalmed Edmonton of the early nineties, or so it seems to me. Alberta has a kick-'em-when-they're-down mentality. The poor, marginalized and weak will always find large numbers of Albertans willing to make their bad situation even worse.

And to be frank, I don't think any marginalized group has it worse in Alberta than homosexuals.