Niagara councillor's gay marriage comments spark backlash

St. Catharines residents have requested investigations into whether councillor Andy Petrowski violated codes of conduct.

Thestar.com
July 29, 2015
By Diana Hall

Niagara regional councillor Andy Petrowski is the subject of two formal requests that he be investigated for code of conduct violations after making what one St. Catharines resident called “offensive, hurtful and damaging” remarks about gay marriage on social media and in the local paper earlier this summer.

Sean Polden, an immigration consultant from St. Catharines who filed the complaints, said he wants Petrowski - who holds deep Christian beliefs and is one of seven city representatives on regional council - to be held accountable for the comments that left him feeling “completely offended.”

Polden said he delivered the complaints to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission and the Niagara Regional Council Chair’s office in the last week on behalf of a group of concerned St. Catharines residents. The complaint to council pointed to the portion of the body’s code of conduct forbidding members from imposing “personal, moral or religious standards on others.”

The request for an investigation also pointed to a January 2014 amendment to the code, stating “A member shall not speak in a manner that is discriminatory to any individual based on the person’s race, ancestry, place of origin, creed, gender, sexual orientation, age, colour, marital status or disability.”

The comments first surfaced at the end of June on Petrowski’s Twitter account, which has since been deleted. According to the St. Catharines Standard, he tweeted: “Obama singing ‘Amazing Grace’ the day he condones same-sex marriage. Talk about a perverted mind?!”

The councillor, who also serves as vice-chair on The Regional Municipality of Niagara Police Services Board, was thrown into the spotlight when he later discussed the tweet and his personal beliefs in an interview with the Standard.

“You can’t stand for Christian faith and say you are pro same-sex marriage because Christianity deems marriage to be between a man and a woman,” Petrowski said in an audio recording posted to the paper’s website.

“If you’re going to now say, ‘I believe in murder and I call myself a Christian,’ that would be perverted, that would be twisted. Same thing, same concept,” he said.

Petrowski later told the Star he didn’t mean to offend anyone when he spoke about his personal beliefs, adding the murder comment was a “larger comment” in the context of sins.

“God treats anger as a sin, He treats pride as a sin, He treats lust as a sin, and all Christians, until they get to Heaven, are not perfect people. So, my reference to murder is simply this: murder is a sin, and in God's eyes, the only marriage that he blesses is between a man and a woman,” he explained.

But the comments sparked some public anger, prompting Petrowski to apologize on Twitter, and to the chair of Niagara Regional Council, who passed along the apology to fellow council members at their meeting on July 23.

Three apologies should have been enough to contain the backlash, Petrowski said, but to Ted Mouradian, a conflict resolution consultant and St. Catharines citizen who spoke at last week’s meeting, the damage has already been done.

“The main thing I’m interested in is how, in 2015, the Niagara Regional Council could say ‘well, I got an apology from him, case closed,’ ” said Mouradian, who, like Polden, ran for a regional councillor position with Petrowski in the 2010 and 2014 municipal elections, respectively.

“The problem is they haven’t held him accountable for his behaviour,” Mouradian said.

Mouradian added council should be taking steps to censure Petrowski and call him out on his comments. All it would take, he said, is for councillors to “stand up and say ‘excuse me, you can’t say that.’ ”

According to Tim Rigby, a St. Catharines councillor, apologies haven’t changed Petrowski’s behaviour.

“In this case, and other times, he has been outrageous in his remarks, and … it ends up he only apologizes,” Rigby told the Star. “I think it's time that he should pay in some way or another.”

According to Rigby, the Niagara Regional Council doesn’t have the authority to take away any power or vote to kick Petrowski out of council. Members also voted to do away with the council’s integrity commissioner role earlier this year.

“I don’t believe this notion that just because you're a public official you don’t have the right to personal expression,” Petrowski said, adding that people are free to follow their own set of beliefs and can define marriage differently.

Regional Council Chair Alan Caslin’s office confirmed it had received a complaint about possible code of conduct violations, and that Caslin would review the complaint “over the coming weeks” in an emailed statement to the Star.

The Ontario Civilian Police Commission wouldn’t confirm or deny receiving a similar complaint.