Burnaby mayoral candidate Sylvia Gung promises to ban all public displays of affection, including the wedding kiss ritual and hand holding, if elected. When I first read of her platform in the Vancouver Sun, I was stunned that such a person would run for mayor, and absolutely terrified that such a person might win the position. As expected, she is undergoing a lot of rapid fire from the media and community.
Gung feels that public displays of affection lead to violence, and can hurt public decorum. In a phone interview with Drex, a radio host on CKNW AM980, she cited an incident where a same-sex couple seen kissing in public was subsequently tailed and severely injured by homophobic bystanders. Her belief is that ‘bedroom behaviour’ is unacceptable on the streets because it encourages blatant sexuality, and leads to rape and assault. Even if Gung’s solutions to these problems of violence are well-intentioned, they are terribly ill-founded.
Her logic criminalizes passionate innocents, and blames them for giving criminals opportunities to take advantage of them. Essentially, she blames the rape victim for the rapist’s actions, which is exactly the kind of mindset that our society is trying to reverse. There are definitely more relevant and effective ways to curb violence.
[Sylvia Gung’s] logic blames passionate innocents for giving criminals opportunities to take advantage of them.
Even if, just for a moment, we hypothesized that her motion had legitimate grounds, how could it be enforced? How many people would be fined or incarcerated for such ‘acts of misdemeanour?’ How much taxpayer money would be wasted on a non-issue, rather than fighting the real criminals? This is an extreme logical fallacy that can only ever be impractical and counterproductive.
As for public decorum, in an interview with National Post, Gung said that people who insist on showing public affection are “bullies” — in other words, they do not care about how uncomfortable their actions make to those around them feel. That, however, is a personal opinion, and while it may be shared by others, it is a personal prejudice that should not infringe upon an entire community’s public behaviour, or a person’s freedom of choice.
I don’t know Gung personally, and so any value judgments I can make about her derive from how the media chooses to portray her. When questioned on her standpoint, it did not appear that she knew what she was talking about. Her ‘logic’ was illogical, her responses did not fully answer the questions posed, and any evidence she provided was merely hearsay or, at best, of isolated incidents in the newspaper with no statistical proof.
Gung may mean well with her ideas to ‘improve’ Burnaby, but at the end of the day, she is not a reliable spokesperson for the city. We need individuals in government who can carry society forward — who can advance it and not regress it. In this day and age, there is no room for Sylvia Gung in Burnaby City Hall.
