LETTER: Protecting human rights and inclusiveness
By Letters to the editor
Dear Elected Representatives to the School Boards 8 & 20:
I write today to express my concern over the negative impact on the lives of teachers and students that the Anti-SOGI voices are attempting to create.
I support all initiatives that line up with our Province’s Human Rights guidance, to protect the most marginalized in our society and in our school system. That includes fighting racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It includes creating safe spaces for children who may not find safety at home to be who they are destined to be. It includes separating state initiatives like education from religious interference which tries to impose a specific mindset on the general public.
I have been horrified by the unleashing of hateful rhetoric aimed at the members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and the plethora of misinformation that is being used to deliberately create fear among otherwise rational people. More than ever in this polarised environment, queer, trans and questioning children need to find sanctuary from a world that tells them they are somehow wrong or unnatural or in worst case scenarios, evil.
To try and forcibly impose a vision of “man, woman and nothing else” is dangerous to those who have never felt that they could fit so conveniently into a box built by others. The fact that SOGI is an attempt to carry on the work of anti-bullying, anti-discrimination and embracing the diversity of our species is something that we should be celebrating and I thank the school board here and those across the province for staying steadfast in doing the right thing.
I think everyone has the right to be WHO THEY ARE, not who someone else thinks they should be. In order to discover who they are, they need the safe and accepting space to come to their own conclusions. Thank you for attempting to give them that safety net.
Hopefully with the help of school systems, educating about the wholesomeness of our complicated human existence and the value of each child in their own self definition, the future will be less fearful and less vitriolic . As these children grow up to be the next generation of adults may they hold dear the idea that we are all equal in all our differences and we all have the right to our own body autonomy. In that way we will evolve. Thank you for helping us in that evolution.
Sincerely,
Cindy McCallum Miller
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