The Christian Heritage Party has announced it will take the city of Hamilton to court after the municipality’s transit system removed three ads from bus shelters that challenged the city’s policy allowing self-identifying transgender men to use women’s washrooms and change rooms.
The CHP raised $50,000 in one week when it appealed to supporters to back their legal challenge. On Sept. 21, party president Peter Vogel told The Interim the CHP was ready to proceed with their legal action, although the papers had yet to be filed.
LifeSiteNews reported, “the judge won’t be asked to rule on the city’s policy, still being finalized, on allowing ‘transgender’ individuals to use the washroom of their choice regardless of biological gender.” Rather, as Jim Enos, president of CHP Ontario told LifeSiteNews, “the issue is free speech and freedom of expression.” He said his party has the “the right to use bus shelters to express opinions even if the government doesn’t like those opinions.”
The ads showed a man wearing a baseball cap pushing open a door labeled “Ladies Shower.” The ads bear the message: “Competing Rights – Where’s the Justice?” The ads were removed on August 11 about a week after they were erected. The CHP paid $1,425 to have them posted for CHP sues Hamilton over ad removal a month. The ads were removed after one complaint that they were anti-transgender. Enos said they were removed before he had a chance to plead the party’s case with city officials.
The complainant, Cole Gately, told the Hamilton Spectator, he was offended and the ads “come very close to violating trans people’s human rights.”Public Works General Manager Gerry Davis told the Spectator, “we felt the ads were inappropriate.”
