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By Eva Cohen

VANCOUVER — Shinder Purewal, the unsuccessful Liberal candidate for Surrey-North in May’s federal election, caused a Twitter storm Thursday after he sent out a tweet calling this weekend’s massive Vancouver Pride Parade “vulgar.”

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The controversial tweet said: “Vancouver’s so-called “Pride Parade” should be banned. It is vulgar … to say the least! #cdnpoli”.The Kwantlen University professor and former citizenship judge has been receiving a flood of responses to his tweet, most of them in opposition to his statement.

When asked about the tweet, Prof. Purewal said, “My response is very simple: If I can’t take my family to a place because of open sexuality, my opinion is that it’s simply vulgar. That does not mean that I don’t support same-sex marriage, which I do and voted for, or that I don’t support people of different sexual orientation, but for it to be in public is vulgar.”

Response tweets to Prof. Purewal continue to appear on the website, including those questioning whether he has ever attended a pride parade, to which he did not respond.