West Chester Borough Council again did not respond to residents who pointed out last week that the emails showed that OutFest was canceled for lack of volunteers and sponsors—not by hate and threats.
OutFest is billed as a celebration of people telling others that they are gay and was also supposed to feature drag queens.
Beth Ann Rosica Ph.D., a resident who had run for mayor on the Libertarian ticket, told officials that emails she obtained by right-to-know requests showed that statements about their previous statements about the cancelation of the festival were misleading.
Only three of the nine emails sent prior to OutFest were negative, so reports that council was barraged by an onslaught of angry and threatening emails were wrong.
At the time, Council President Michael Stefano told CBS Philadelphia there council had received “tons of emails” about the event.
Stefano told the Delaware Valley Journal Friday that he will not retract his previous comments about the emails.
“I stand by the fact that we received hateful emails,” said Stefano.
John McDonald
“The emails had a lot of hate toward the drag queen community, likening it to “grooming” (of children) and pedophilia and I find that extremely hateful,” Stefano said.
Rosica had asked the mayor and council to take back their previous statements last month but they did not. And, the town leaders also ignored the issue at their most recent meeting on Nov. 16.
“I am here this month again to ask council to correct the record so that our community and the surrounding communities do not think we live in a hate-filled town,” Rosica told the council.
“They refuse to respond to retract and the Daily Local News refuses to print a retraction as well,” Rosica said later.
John McDonald, another resident, wrote a clever parody that he read to the board that he read: “The Boy Who Cried Hate.”
“The year was 2022 in a lovely little hamlet called West Chester, Pa. It was recently dubbed as the ‘virtue signaling capital of the world.’ According to all of the yard signs, hate didn’t live here.”
McDonald accused the council president of making the story up and dubbed him “Jussie Stefano.”
Stefano “got up to the mic and conjured up a hate hoax story for the ages. He proclaimed that he had dozens of vitriolic and hateful emails from town residents about other members of the community. The crowd gasped in horror. The local CCP owned newspaper, The Daily Lazy News salivated and quickly ran the story without seeking evidence of such emails.
“The story spread like wild fire. Jussie smiled like the Grinch who stole Christmas (you know the one). At last, citizens were divided, and insults and rumors ran amuck on the interwebs. The town was torn apart.
“But then a heroic truth detector emerged from West Miner Street and called Jussie out on his bluff. She asked him to provide evidence of his claims. Seeing as Jussie didn’t have any evidence, she legally obtained his emails and they revealed something terrible. You see, it turns out that Jussie hadn’t received dozens of hateful and vitriolic emails. It was much worse. He hadn’t received not a one,” said McDonald.
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