MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via our website. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article and a letter regarding vendors withdrawing from the Orillia Fairgrounds Farmers’ Market.
Ms. La Plume, according to the reported facts, listened in on a private conversation between an unnamed vendor and a customer.
In this private conversation the vendor made some derogatory comments about the LGBTQ+ community. He was not speaking on behalf of the market administration nor did he place the comments in the public forum.
Overhearing other people’s private conversation is at times unavoidable. However, I submit that, unless there is some criminal activity involved, good manners dictate to ignore such remarks or deal privately with the speaker. Moving the content of private conversations into the public forum will only result in more friction in the community and at times result in legal actions without significantly reducing racist behaviour or contributing to reconciliation.
Furthermore, moving pieces and bits of private conversation into public platforms will, in the long run, stifle spontaneous expression of thought in many settings. In other words we will drift towards a society in which people are afraid to talk on the street or in stores as was and is the case in many dictatorships.
Konrad Brenner
Ramara
