Gay and lesbian activists stage a protest outside the home of the Canadian florists who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex couple's wedding.

Not cool.

These florists, presumably, have a flower shop somewhere. Their place of business would've been a much more appropriate place to stage a protest about their discriminatory—and illegal—business practices. As peaceful as this entirely legal protest was, I'm against making people feel uncomfortable or unsafe in their own homes. Even bigots. And staging protests outside people's homes is a tactic usually employed by rightwing anti-abortion activists and the KKK back in the day. I don't think this is a tactic that gay rights movement should endorse or adopt.

To bring this down to a personal level: I say a lot of shit that pisses off the religious right. I don't want rightwing anti-gay haters turning up on the sidewalk outside my house, annoying my neighbors, and, most importantly, making my son feel unsafe in his own home. (Honestly sometimes I'm surprised that they haven't; I'd even go so far to express my gratitude—yes, to the haters—that they haven't.) Protesting outside people's homes? I don't think they should do that to us, any of us, and I don't think we should do that to them, any of them. Not Tony, not Maggie, not these florists.

UPDATE: There's no flower shop, apparently—this is a home-based business. Nevertheless, I would err on the side of not staging protests at people's homes. There had to be some other way to stage a protest against what is, as I wrote in earlier post, not that big a deal. When the wedding planner described the couple whose business was turned away as devastated ("this is something that's going to stay with them for years"), I wrote...

Oh, please. Shrug the bigot off, faggots, and make a big show of taking your business elsewhere. This can't be the first you've about or from anti-gay bigots over the course of your lives. There are lots of people out there who don't think your lives are OK and you haven't let them stop you—or reduce you to tears—up to now, right? Don't give this stupid petal pusher so much power. How about you double your flower order and take it to—hey!—a gay florist who would welcome your business?

Brainstorming now: you wanna stage a TV-news friendly protest—you gotta give 'em something to tpae—and you don't wanna stage a protest at the bigot's place of business because it's also the bigot's home. How about this: raise money online for a flower fund for this couple's wedding—I'd would've kicked in some dough—and make sure that their wedding was the most flower-bedazzled thing that ever happened in New Brunswick, and invite the TV cameras to come and film the chapel and the reception (before, not during, the wedding), and interview the florist who was happy to take this couple's business and ecstatic at the resulting size of the order. How about that?