Anti-Christian posters put on youth centre site, church

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/01/2011 (5404 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Christian-based youth centre under construction and a Wolseley- area church and nearby bakery were targeted with anti-Christian messages on posters during the Christmas season.

The posters, which appear to depict Mary on a donkey being led by Joseph to a building with the words Women’s Health Care Services on the outside, state: “We wish you a pro-choice because God raped Mary Christmas.”

At the bottom of the poster is “Youth Against Christ.”

John Courtney, executive director of Youth For Christ, denounced the posters and the persons responsible for them.

“This was specific against Youth For Christ,” Courtney said on Tuesday.

“It is very low… it’s not a responsible way to handle their cause.

“It is in such poor taste I don’t know where you cross the line from poor taste to a hate crime.”

Courtney said it is also disturbing that the posters weren’t quick handmade creations but appeared to be professionally designed and printed.

Courtney said the posters were glued over signs the organization had placed on the fencing outside the construction of its new facility on Main Street and Higgins Avenue.

The organization is building a $13.2-million Centre for Youth Excellence which will include a gym, dance studio, climbing wall, job-training centre and other features. The city and federal governments each contributed $3.2 million.

A few kilometres away, the same posters were stuck on a sign advertising Christmas services at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church on Westminster Avenue and on the side of the nearby Tall Grass Bakery.

A spokesperson for the church could not be reached for comment.

Lyle Barkman, the bakery’s co-owner, said they are still scraping off the poster from their wall.

“It’s not the first graffiti we’ve had — we’re in the inner city,” he said.

“It comes with the territory.”

Lorna Dueck, a faith columnist for the Globe and Mail, was in Winnipeg during the holidays and heard about the Youth for Christ incident and another one at another church where parishioners found anti-Christian messages on flyers stuck under their windshields as they emerged from their Christmas Eve services.

“It’s unthinkable to not raise the alarm over voices of anti-Christian sentiment that are postering Winnipeg,” Dueck said.

“It must be denounced… In many parts of the world the freedom of religion we have in Canada is unthinkable. To not guard it would be to say that the human-rights abuses others suffer in wanting freedom of religion, and the accounts of the violence they suffer, does not matter.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca