Pride month was born not in celebration but in protest against attacks on the LGBTQ community. Against police raids on bars and bathhouses and other queer gathering places.
It became a protest against a society that shunned those with AIDS. Against laws that denied same-sex couples equal rights. And against prejudice toward people whose identity did not match their body.
Once again, the LGBTQ community is under assault. Those who stand with them must help them fight back.
On Thursday, New Brunswick’s Legislative Assembly is to vote on a motion that seeks to roll back changes imposed last week by Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs. Those changes reversed his own government’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity policy for schools.
Mr. Higgs’s biggest change mandates that “transgender or non-binary students under the age of 16 will require parental consent in order for their preferred first name to be officially used for recordkeeping purposes and daily management.” This garnered protests, not only from opposition Liberals and the province’s child and youth advocate, but from eight Conservative MLAs, including six cabinet ministers.
The dissident MLAs – all MLAs, for that matter – should vote in support of returning to the previous policy, which allows children to change their names or pronouns at school without teachers being forced to tell parents.
The bill’s defenders talk about the rights of parents to be informed about their children. One recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Canadians agree that schools should inform parents when children decide to change their pronoun or gender. Mr. Higgs, who has threatened to call a snap election on the issue, believes he has public opinion on his side.
But the Premier and his supporters are getting things backward: it’s the fundamental responsibility of parents to know what is going on with their kids. If they do not, that is their failing – not a teacher’s. Certainly, a school should tell parents if they believe a child is at imminent risk of harm. A change in name or preferred pronouns does not meet that test.
There are legitimate debates over whether and when chemical or surgical treatments are appropriate for young people who believe their true gender does not align with the gender they were born with. The Swedish government, for example, recently restricted the use of chemical and surgical procedures for minors with gender dysphoria, citing insufficient evidence of long-term consequences.
Even staunch allies of the LGBTQ community may seek clearer rules concerning transgender athletes, or transgender use of facilities such as locker rooms and women’s shelters.
But legitimate concerns over how to best accommodate transgender people must not distract from the greater challenge of dealing with growing waves of intolerance toward gender and sexual minorities.
In Ottawa last Friday, parents protesting transgender policies in schools encouraged their children to stomp on the Pride flag. Elsewhere in Canada, people protest the flying of that flag at schools during Pride month, and demand that books they find offensive be removed from libraries.
Zealots and bigots in the United States foment conspiracy theories about transgender activists “grooming” confused children to assert a different gender. At least 14 states have passed or introduced bills restricting drag events. Many states restrict lessons on sexual or gender minorities. Copycat protesters seek to replicate American crackpot conspiracy theories and restrictions in Canada.
The threat of that U.S. culture war infecting Canada, and harming trans Canadians, is a key reason for The Globe editorial board’s decision to weigh in on the debate over trans rights for the first time.
Almost 60 years ago, when committing a homosexual act was a serious felony in Canada, this newspaper declared, in support of a bill to decriminalize such acts, that the state “has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation,” and Pierre Trudeau, then minister of justice, famously rephrased that declaration as “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”
Now, a new struggle to protect the rights of LGBTQ Canadians is emerging. And this newspaper wishes to be just as emphatic today as we were then: The state has both a right and a duty to protect sexual and gender minorities across this nation.