Acceptance of LGBT youth in schools and acceptance of differences in sexual orientation and gender are well understood in Canada to mean protection of students from harm, and to promote acceptance and understanding of differences. Acceptance of others includes acceptance and protection of all students, including those of different religions, different dress, and who come to Canada from different places of origin.
The Accepting Schools Act is not about ‘forcing your kids to learn the same sex lifestyle’, as claimed in hate literature. Nor is this about ‘shocking changes in the curriculum which will change not only behaviour of our kids but also the behaviour of the whole society’.
It is about tolerance and acceptance, something Mr. Lees and the Family Coalition Party he leads are unfamiliar with.
Mr. Lees and the Family Coalition Party have a long history of attacking the rights of others, and particularly the rights of women to reproductive choice of birth or abortion.
Mr. Lees and his fundamentalist Christian party also want the public to pay for private and religious school funding in Ontario. They oppose a single, secular and quality public school system open to all regardless of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation or place of origin, that the Communist Party and others call for.
Mr. Lees and the Family Coalition Party are linked with a slew of right-wing organizations that are on record as supporting deep cuts to immigration, lower wages for immigrant workers, cuts to settlement services and essential social programs, and who support Canada’s new foreign policy of war and aggression around the world.
Mr. Lees says it is his right under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to promote homophobia, hatred and division in our schools and communities. But these are not rights or freedoms, and the courts and Canadians will reject these ideas and actions as backward, harmful and hateful, in the same way they have rejected Islamaphobia and other hate and ignorance based attempts to split and divide working people
Progressive people and organizations like the Communist Party have fought for decades to win equality and security for all through universal quality public education and healthcare, and the expansion of civil, social, democratic and equality rights for all. Now these rights are under attack.
We call on the labour and democratic movements and all people of goodwill who value education, equality and democracy to stand together to protect these rights and achievements – for our children, for ourselves, for a peaceful and democratic future.
Executive Committee
Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)
October 28, 2012
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