Outloud St. Albert is lending its support to an online petition calling on the incoming UCP government to stop policies that could negatively impact the LGBTQ community.
The Change.org petition, called Stop the UCP LGBTQ policy, continues to crawl toward its 25,000-signature goal with only a few hundred left to go as of Monday morning. The petition wants the UCP to “remove any homophobic aspects of the UCP platform” and “declare LGBTQ+ people will be protected under this government.”
The petition was quickly supported online by Outloud St. Albert.
Terry Soetaert, executive director of the non-profit group, said he felt it was important to spread the message because of how important gay-straight alliances (GSA) are.
“Without GSAs, kids are going to have a way harder time,” he said. “We try to do that with Outloud but they need something in their schools where it’s close to them, it’s accessible.”
GSAs are school-based groups that promote safe, inclusive learning environments for students regardless of their sexual or gender orientation, according to Alberta Education. They provide both counselling and peer support for students and raise awareness about gender/sexual identity issues.
LGBTQ rights were a major issue during the provincial election, especially regarding changes the UCP proposed to make. The UCP’s education plan includes rolling back the current legislation in favour of the former Progressive Conservative government’s Education Act. This means school principals would no longer have to grant student requests to form a GSA immediately and school staff could inform parents or guardians that their child was attending a GSA.
Some UCP candidates came under fire during the election for anti-LGBTQ views, including Drayton Valley-Devon UCP MLA Mark Smith after comments he made during a 2013 sermon surfaced. Smith, who was re-elected, has since apologized.
With the UCP holding a majority of seats at the legislature, Soetaert said he hopes the new government will listen to these concerns.“The UCP has a lot of promises and hopefully they can come through on a few of them with what everyone’s worried about in the energy sector and oil and all of that,” he said. “But with this one, when (Premier-designate Jason) Kenney says he wants to give parents the right to know everything about their kids, that’s great if the parents are on. If they’re not, that’s when the real danger comes in.”
UCP Morinville-St. Albert MLA-elect Dale Nally told the Gazette on Monday that Kenney addressed these concerns on the campaign trail.
"During the campaign and in the days following, our leader and team have made it clear we will represent all Albertans, including the LGBTQ2S+ community," Nally said in an email.
"We have been clear that we don’t support “outing” students or mandatory notification. Our priorities in government will continue to reflect that commitment."
Soetaert said if parents or guardians aren’t supportive of what their children are doing, it can result in the child being kicked out of their home or even disowned. The more extreme reactions, he said, happen when children are taken into conversion therapy to try and cure them. Prior to the recent provincial election, the NDP had established a working group to look at banning conversion therapy in Alberta.
As for GSAs, Soetaert said there’s a lot of propaganda that tries to describe them as sex clubs, which he called ridiculous.“It’s just a total lack of education,” he added. “You could say that about any other organization. If somebody is in cheerleading or if they’re in a religious group or something. It’s all false. It’s what people choose to believe, unfortunately.”
