About Alberta's Proposed Ban On Trans Athletes

Among the heartless and cruel things that Danielle Smith announced in her "policy package" about parental rights (anti-transgender policy, really), was an absolute ban on transgender women competing in sports in Alberta. The rationale being that somehow "transgender women have massive advantages in athletics", and somehow that having transgender women playing in women's leagues creates a "danger" to women. 

But, more seriously, does this make any sense from a policy perspective?

The UCP Goes "Hold My Beer" To The CPC

Author's Note:  I started writing something about the UCP's policy resolutions in October, but it seemed redundant.  Now that the UCP has held their AGM, and these have been voted on, it's time to take a look at the shape of the party that results from it. 

In September, the CPC held its policy convention and went full SoCon - passing every discriminatory, bigotry-laden policy put before them - and by significant margins.  This weekend, the UCP said to the CPC:  "Hold my beer".  

Before the UCP delegates this weekend were some 30 policy resolutions, and they ranged from almost reasonable sounding policy ideas to outright conspiracy theory level crackpottery.  The resulting policy is a pastiche of terrible ideas rooted in bigotry and ignorance.  

Of Campaigns, Bigotry, and Dog Whistles

So, with UCP leader Danielle Smith regularly playing dodge-em with her own statements in the past, it shouldn't come as any big surprise that something would come bubbling to the surface from one of the UCP candidates.  

This week's entry into the bigot olympics comes via the UCP candidate for Lacombe-Ponoka, Jennifer Johnson, who thought it would be "clever" to compare having transgender kids in schools to adding fecal matter to cookie dough. I'm not going to go into dismantling the rancid stupidity of her comments beyond borrowing from Lily Allen, and saying "Fuck You Very, Very Much", Ms Johnson. 

I've listened to the recording, and it was offensive to say the least, and the other people in the room are all giving her laughs and knowing chuckles. Every last person in that room should be ashamed of themselves. 

After bubbling around for a couple of days, today, on the day of the leader's debate, Danielle Smith issued the following as a statement on the matter:  

This thing is one giant dog whistle from start to finish. There are a number of things about it I want to highlight. 

First, it doesn't eject Ms. Johnson from the UCP candidate pool, it just says "well, when government first sits, you won't be part of caucus.  But it also clearly leaves open the door for her to join caucus later.  It doesn't stipulate any conditions around that return. 

The message here is clear enough: "What you said is bad, but we're going to give you a nudge and a wink as punishment". The intent is simple:  wait for the ruckus to die down, and we'll quietly bring you into caucus then. 

There is an underlying dog whistle here, and I suspect it comes from the Take Back Alberta crowd: "To the base:  Shut up about trans issues, they're political dynamite".  They're not wrong about this, but we also know that TBA organizers are in full agreement with Ms. Johnson - as can be seen carefully coded in the following message promoting one of their events: 

Lurking in there are not-so-subtly worded comments aimed at transgender people living normal lives (and doing things like say ... swimming - a reference to an alleged, and disproven, indecent exposure event at a pool in Calgary), and drag queen story time events at public libraries. 

The second part is that "there are valid discussions to be had" - this is a carefully worded dog whistle that is little different to the 2019 issue around GSAs.  "Oh, we're protecting the children!".  No, you're not. The only meaningful discussion related to transgender children is to be had between the children, their parents, and their doctors. The only public policy matter is the one that says "how do we support these families so that we don't end up traumatizing the children with our bullshit as adults?".

Smith's comments "encouraging" candidates to become more informed are, at best, a limp attempt to paper over the unbridled hatred racing around inside her party. I can't help but think of it as little different than her attempts to defend Hunsperger in 2012 by saying "well, he's entitled to hold those opinions".  

You Do NOT Roll Over For Fascists

So, on Saturday, Jen Gerson published a column in the Globe and Mail titled “The Backlash Against Drag Artists Is Unfair, But It’s No Mystery Why It’s Happening”.  I read it on Saturday, it’s taken me the last couple of days to calm down enough to write a response to it. 

First, it’s the classic “tut-tutting” that the queer community has gotten over decades. More or less, it boils down to “don’t go too far, or you’ll upset someone”. I remember hearing that same argument being made in the 80s - which was basically “well, being gay isn’t a crime any more, you should be happy with that”. Now it’s “well, it’s (sort of) okay to be trans, but don’t let anyone know you’re trans because they might get upset about it”.

It’s condescending, and it’s garbage that basically boils down to “don’t do anything that will make the hardline religious nutcases upset” … and yes, it’s _ALWAYS_ coming from hardline religious nutcases. In my personal archives, the vast preponderance of anti-2SLGBTQ+ material comes from people who profess to be “Christian” (in particular) - and those archives now go back to the mid-1990s. The pattern is consistent.

The thing about these claims is that they tend to treat “rights as pie”, as if recognizing the validity of someone else’s existence is magically going to mean someone else “loses something”. That has never been the case. Never has recognizing the validity of another person’s rights resulted in someone else “losing” anything.

Gerson’s analysis basically says “well, fascism is on the rise, so you can expect to have your rights rolled back”. NO. WE. DO. NOT. History is abundantly clear what happens with movements like fascism. We should be clearly, and loudly demanding that our rights be respected, and our existence normalized in society.

Gerson might be willing to roll over to the fascists. I am not

Bishop Henry Returns ...

It has been quite some time since I felt a need to address something that Calgary's Bishop Fred Henry has written.  Then I happened to wander past the Calgary Diocese website and read his latest "pastoral letter" (or whatever his columns on the website are officially known as).  The title is benign enough:  "Heal the Wounds, So Many Wounds ..." 

Unfortunately, what the reader is then subjected to is possibly the most offensive screed the Bishop has written in several years.

It starts off with one of the Bishop's standard attacks on "liberalism", and then goes after Transgender people:

The cutting edge of liberal culture is the attempt to label the two created human sexes, male and female, as arbitrary and unjust impositions on humanity. This involves an attempt to separate sex from gender, that is, the biological fact (human anatomy and chromosomal cellular structure) of the two human sexes from their social and cultural expressions, which they term "gender," and which is seen as totally socially constructed and in no way grounded in nature. 

Then, using such a phenomenon as hormonal treatment and "sex-change operations," they begin to deny the very stability and reality of the two created sexes. After that, they claim that whether or not one undergoes such an operation, one's subjective feeling about what sex/gender one is trumps the physical facts of one's body. 

- See more at: http://calgarydiocese.ca/messages-from-the-bishop/1362-heal-the-wounds-heal-the-wounds-so-many-wounds.html#sthash.jjOtfvFp.dpuf

Lovely, Bishop Henry.  I see that once again you have returned to your old haunts - by attacking that which you refuse to even attempt to understand.  Are you really going to argue that chromosomes define gender?  Or that physical anatomy defines gender?  Still?

I'm going to come back to this topic in a minute, because there are a couple of other gems in the Bishop's screed that I think warrant bringing to your attention.

The soul and the body are in a master/slave relationship, the former legitimately dominating and re-making the latter. For Biblical people, the body can never be construed as a prison for the soul, nor as an object for the soul's manipulation. Moreover, the mind or will is not the "true self" standing over and against the body; rather, the body, with its distinctive form, intelligibility, and finality, is an essential constituent of the true self. 

Let me get this straight - the Bishop wishes to argue that the distinction between gender and sex that there is actual evidence for, is overruled by the mythology of a soul (which may or may not exist - I haven't seen any evidence which objectively substantiates such a claim), and somehow the "soul and body are intertwined", and therefore couldn't possibly be at odds with each other?  Sure ...

Tolerance is a working principle that enables us to live in peace with each other and their ideas. Most of the time it is a good thing. But it is not an end in itself, and to tolerate or excuse a grave evil in society is itself a grave evil. 

Oh, even better.  He doesn't quite go as far as saying it, but essentially the Bishop is saying that transgender people are a "grave evil".   Wow - that's quite a claim, Bishop.  Just what is the evil that transgender people are perpetrating?

Let's come back to the Bishop's complaint that gender and sex are inextricably linked with each other for a moment.  We already know plenty of situations where chromosomes and anatomy don't fully align, such as a woman with a 46 XY karyotype, or perhaps he'd prefer to review Swaab's 2009 paper about brain differentiation during gestation.  Either way, the Bishop's argument that chromosomes or genitalia tell the "whole story" is complete nonsense.

As for gender roles, we know those are in large part social constructs.  The impact of messages in mass media about how boys should behave or what girls should do are pervasive, as are the messages we live with in our social circles.  The effect of these in socialization is neither trivial nor easily ignored.  Yet, we have a lot of transgender people who manage to successfully transition and blend into their new social roles.  If the two were inextricably linked as the Bishop claims, this would seem to be a nearly impossible task, and yet it happens.

As for the Bishop's implicit declaration that transgender people are some kind of "grave evil", I would suggest to the Bishop that he needs to substantiate just what this grave evil might be.  What I see are a lot of people bravely living their lives as honestly as possible.  If the Bishop thinks that this is "deceptive" and "evil", perhaps the Bishop needs to be reminded of the old saw about "walking a mile in another person's shoes".   There are a good many people in the Transgender community as a whole who might justifiably take umbrage at the Bishop's attempt to invalidate their reality and lived experiences.  

Bishop Henry, Bill 10 ... Lies, Lies and More Lies

If there is one thing that I find infuriating, it is when grown men like Bishop Henry lie.

In today's Calgary Herald, there is a copy of a pastoral letter that Bishop Henry has had distributed through the churches of his diocese.  In it, we find the following little gem:

The mandating of Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs) is problematic for a number of reasons.  It infringes parental authority over their children, the freedom to instruct one's children in a manner consistent with their faith, and citizens rights to manifest their religious beliefs by worship and practice in the absence of coercion or constraint by government.

First of all, Bill 202 did not "mandate" the creation of GSAs.  What it does is remove the ability for a school board or school to refuse to allow a GSA to be created.

Nobody is saying that participation in a GSA is mandatory for the students, nor is it mandatory for parents to allow their children to participate in the GSA.  The obligation for schools is to allow the organization.  No more, no less.  The Bishop's argument here is a distortion of the reality - a lie.

As for the "freedom to instruct one's children", let's have a little discussion about that shall we?  Nobody is talking about the GSA being mandatory.  Nor is the GSA a "teaching" moment.  We are talking about a student led organization providing support to other students.  So, just where is this right being "infringed"?  I'm pretty sure that all sorts of school activities violate one aspect or another of either the bible or the RC Catechism, and we don't hear the bishops moaning about them.  Social groups in schools exist all the time.  If the RC church leaders think that they don't have gay students in their halls, perhaps they need to do some learning.

So, it must come down to the right to "manifest their religious beliefs ...".  Let's consider this for a moment.  The bishops are basically arguing that their beliefs trump the rights of students.  In this case, their "belief" that homosexuality is a sin.  So what?  That hasn't made it go away in the last 2,000 years or so, I don't think it's going away anytime soon.  Let's consider that discussion around "manifesting religious beliefs" a little further.  Who is manifesting which beliefs here?  Does the student not have a right to express their beliefs, or is that now a right reserved solely for the parents?  Do the rights of a religious school extend to, for example, not teaching science because they don't believe in evolution or they want to believe that the earth is flat?

The fact is that GSAs reduce suicide in the student population.  Religion doesn't reduce suicide among LGBTQ students.  In fact, arguably, "religious beliefs" are near the top of the list for reasons that LGBTQ youth end up suicidal.  Where do the hostile judgments come from most frequently?  Those who claim to have religious "belief" justifying them.  The most fervent of believers are often among the worst abusers in this regard.

A number of recent studies have identified groups of students who are most often bullied.  The Toronto District School Board Research Report reported that students most frequently face bullying attacks based on their physical appearance (38%), their grades or marks (17%) their cultural background (11%) or their gender (6%).  It is imperative that we address the root issue - bullying.

Yeah...let's talk about that for a minute.  38% of students have been harassed about their physical appearance.  According to Egale's survey of LGBTQ students in Canada,  74% of transgender students and 55% of LGB students have been verbally harassed; 37% of transgender students and 21% of LGB students have been physically assaulted in our schools.

I cannot emphasize enough how appalling this really is.  LGBTQ students are around 5% of the population, and yet they are grossly overrepresented as victims of bullying.  The numbers that Bishop Henry cites bury this reality.  Yes, we need to address bullying.  GSAs are a tool for doing so.  Whining because they place an emphasis on normalizing people's sexual and gender identities is simply an attempt at erasure.

Bill 10 is a bad piece of legislation.  Laurie Blakeman's Bill 202 was the correct solution to this problem in the first place.  Let me be absolutely clear about that.  There should be no exemptions.  Bullying is wrong.  Using your "faith" to justify erasure and continued harassment is wrong.

If Alberta students want to create a mutually supportive alliance in a school, that should be their right, without exception and without interference.

Prentice's Bill 10: A Legislative Trojan Horse

There is little doubt that the Prentice government is getting its ass handed to it on the editorial pages of newspapers across Canada with respect to its hastily written Bill 10 counter response to Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman's Bill 202.

After looking at Bill 10 for a little while, I have come to the conclusion that this is far worse than being a simple ham-fisted counter-response to Bill 202, it is in fact a legislative Trojan Horse which will create enormous problems in Alberta for years to come ... at least until someone has the political spine to remove S11.1 and a couple of other clauses that are being slipped in.

Let's take a closer look at how Bill 10 will change Alberta's Bill of Rights, shall we?

Off the top, the government wishes to amend S1 of the act.  Before Bill 10, S1 reads as follows:

Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms
1 It is hereby recognized and declared that in Alberta there exist

without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely:


(a) the right of the individual to liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;

(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;

(c) freedom of religion;

(d) freedom of speech; 

(e) freedom of assembly and association;

(f) freedom of the press.

After Bill 10, this will read as follows (emphasis added to changes):

Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms
1 It is hereby recognized and declared that in Alberta there exist

without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely:


(a) the right of the individual to liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;

(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;

(c) freedom of religion;

(d) freedom of speech; 

(e) freedom of assembly and association;

(f) freedom of the press.

(g) the right of parents to make informed decisions respecting the education of their children. 

Please note, this is not the Alberta Human Rights Act, but the more foundational BILL OF RIGHTS. Section 2 of the Bill of Rights legislation clearly states that all other legislation in Alberta is assumed to operate in compliance with this act unless specifically stated to do so.  In other words, the Bill of Rights is one step removed from the Constitution in terms of legal hierarchy.

Whose bright idea was it to slide in clause (g)?  A clause like this will be used by the religious wingnut factions to object to everything from sex ed in schools to teaching evolution in biology classes.  This is a broadening of the effect of Section 11.1 of the Alberta Human Rights Act (a different piece of legislation that Minister Blackett amended in 2009.  This will open the door to lawsuits the likes of which we usually hear about coming out of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

Section 11.1 exits the Alberta Human Rights Act, but it is far from dead and gone.  Instead it resurfaces in the Education Act as Section 58.

Section 58 exists under the rubric that there is some kind of "parental right" not to have their kids learn about sexuality.  This is nonsense.  It was nonsense in 2009, and it's nonsense today.  As a parent you have an obligation to your children to ensure that they are educated and literate.  There is no "right" to keep your children ignorant about their own bodies and sexualities.

By adding clause (g) to the Alberta Bill of Rights, the Prentice Government has not only reinforced S58, but in fact has opened up every aspect of Alberta's education system to being challenged by anyone who "objects" to some aspect of the curriculum for one reason or another.

It will also place a chill on teachers as a whole, who will find themselves basically threatened with rights challenges at every turn.

Bill 10 does precious little to protect LGBT youth in our schools, as its provisions for the creation of GSAs (and other student led bodies) is such that the obstacles to appeal are far greater than most students would have the ability to effectively enact an appeal of their school's decision, much less taking said appeal up to the level of the provincial courts.

Instead, it further reinforces the worst aspects of what the Stelmach government did to the Alberta Human Rights Act in 2009, and deepens a set of legislative clauses which are a sop to the narrow-mindedness of a small group of Albertans who seem to think that their religious beliefs have something to say about how children should learn.

Revisions:

3/12/14 11:24   Corrected link to Alberta Bill of Rights instead of Alberta Human Rights Act