Surrey business owner fights backlash for her religious views about LGBT people

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      While a religious group launched a hotly debated online campaign to protest Abbotsford city council’s decision to fly the Pride flag, another LGBT–related social media storm is brewing in Metro Vancouver.

      A Surrey woman is facing a backlash after expressing her views about LGBT people. 

      GeoPond EcoGarden is described as an eco-friendly business focussing on handmade, one-of-a-kind garden and landscaping features, such as planters, birdbaths, ponds, waterfalls, planters, and more. It was a burgeoning project that has since turned into a platform for her religious views about LGBT people. 

      GeoPond is run by Geena Gill (also known as Gea or Gea Ambrosia), who describes herself as an author, advocate, soul-winner, Earthling, adventure sports enthusiast, Messianic Sikh, and scholar of “Intelligent Supernatural Design Phenomena and Prophetic Scripture”. 

      In an interview with the CBC, she said that she was seeing more and more LGBT–related news stories over the last few months, calling it “all this weird stuff”.

      After Gill heard about Rethink Communication’s proposal to create a huge rainbow on the Burrard Bridge and she saw a comment made about how it could be used to show that God loves gay people, she wanted to clarify what she considered misrepresentation of scripture regarding who God loves.

      Gill, who calls herself a “zealous Christian”, says God loves everyone but to a certain extent; she says it doesn’t state in the Bible that God loves gay people.

      In response to the backlash she received for her views, she started posting links to articles and webpages on her business' Facebook page about topics such as gay-rights activists committing sex crimes against children, the connection between NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) and LGBT people, Russia preventing adoption of children by same-sex couples, homosexuality as a mental illness, and why gay people should convert to being straight.

      “I just posted the facts,” she told the CBC. “I didn’t post anything that’s not true.”

      Gill refutes any accusations that her posts are discriminatory or homophobic.

      In a June 20 Facebook post, she stated:

      TAKE NOTE THAT NOT 1 PERSON HAS BEEN ABLE TO QUOTE ANYTHING THAT I SAID THAT WAS REMOTELY BIGOTED OR HATEFUL.

      On the Burrard Bridge story about rainbows and God loving gay people I asked a question. I asked about my parade, mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah to remind ppl what God really thinks about LBGTQRSTUV, and took the rainbow back being that the rainbow is a symbol of Christianity (the covenant between Noah and God after the Great Flood) and not LGBTQRSTUV. Whats wrong with that?

      After getting trolled and threats I said I reserve the right not to do business with God haters and LGBT cultists. Whats wrong with that?

      If Im a bigot and hateful because I have actually read the Bible COVER TO COVER. So be it. If I am a bigot and hateful because I apply scripture to my life. So be it.

      I will serve God.

      You choose to serve mammon.

      #johnthebapistismyhero #toleranceworksbothways #longliveChrist

      In a June 19 Facebook post, she stated that discrimination against LGBT people and racial groups or women are different.

      LGBT community needs to get tough skin like everyone else. LGBT are unaccepted by God b/c willful sin. Colored folk weren't accepted by racists b/c of skin BIG DIFFERENCE. To put the LGBT community in the same lane as those who overcame racism, Women's equality issues is simply a slap in the face to a colored female like myself.

      In another Facebook post on June 19, she stated that she hopes to speak with Bob Kuhn, the president of Trinity Western University which has faced its own controversy in its attempt to launch a Christian law school.

      While she has received criticism, she has also received supportive comments from likeminded individuals.

      Her Facebook page's "About" section now links to the religious site Club Creation rather than her business website, which appears to have been shut down on June 20.

      Meanwhile, Surrey Pride is scheduled to be held on June 28. Unlike other local municipalities, such as North Vancouver and Abbotsford, Surrey has not announced any plans to fly the Pride rainbow flag during Pride Week. 

      You can follow Craig Takeuchi on Twitter at twitter.com/cinecraig. You can also follow the Straight's LGBT coverage on Twitter at twitter.com/StraightLGBT.

      Comments

      36 Comments

      bt

      Jun 20, 2015 at 7:36pm

      'Cause, you know, what maligned and disenfranchised minority groups really need in the face of normalized prejudice and abuse is divisiveness and disunity.

      ninigik

      Jun 20, 2015 at 8:06pm

      Wow! She's a special kind of horrible.

      the truth

      Jun 20, 2015 at 10:11pm

      A birdbath designer calling something weird?

      Values

      Jun 20, 2015 at 11:21pm

      Sexual orientation is one value, but it is fairly low down on the totem pole. You can't buttfuck your way to a cogent expression of your right to dedicate your life to buttfucking sweet ass, can you? But you can express it, which is why the right of expression is more important than any right to sexual orientation. It's the right to expression that lets us express what our other rights are, which is always a social construction, in the exact same way that oh-so-hip contemporary atheists think GOD is. Don't believe in GOD? You shouldn't believe in _any_ normative standard, unless you're...special...

      'Oh, but it's not GOD I believe in, it's human rights!!11111One1'

      And there's a Santa Clause, Virginia, because lots of stupid children write letters to him.

      Barry William Teske

      Jun 21, 2015 at 7:05am

      " LGBT community needs to get tough skin like everyone else."

      Lol...yet there she stands on her soap box, cutter in hand.
      Indiscriminately cutting at anyone and anything that doesn't match her interpretation of self.
      I will say a little prayer for her spirit of HATE in hopes of it finding a truer justice in the form of debt free education, an actual living wage and last but not least, a patient/doctor amended healthcare system.
      I'll even get on my knees...

      Greg Laurie

      Jun 21, 2015 at 8:42am

      Jesus the Christ. The most controversial name for the past 2000 years. More books have been written about Jesus than anything else, ever. Even time itself is measured by Jesus' life.

      Dee Chardain

      Jun 21, 2015 at 9:48am

      If you follow the link on her T-shirt you find her issues relate to a mishmash of Free-Man-On-The-Land confusion; so called 'sovereign law' doctrines and gender intolerance.

      Regarding this Free-Man-On-The-Land nonsense, like much of the human dilemma they take a bit of truth, turn it into a half-truth & then turn it into a no-truth. Our immature race certainly has a great propensity for self-deception.

      If you have a property dispute with some one and they run a razor-wire fence across your property, what is the sane response? Do you protest your perceived injustice by throwing yourself onto the razor wire? Or do you keep your cool and, in the case of religious zealots, do you keep the love live & patiently build the rule of just law to make a better world?

      HellSlayerAndy

      Jun 21, 2015 at 9:48am

      LBGTQRSTUV?
      What the....
      I'm calling it.
      This is nearly HALF of English alphabet.
      You're not doing it right.
      Idiot.

      (Also personally miffed at being excluded! Where's the 'A' for atheists...? pfft)

      Well...

      Jun 21, 2015 at 10:24am

      @Values sounds like the most "zealous" closet case of them all. Was all that mentioning of buttf**king turning you on?