McGuinty said this in the legislature: “We’re going to require that, at every school where students request that this be put in place, they be permitted to organize themselves with a gay-straight alliance,”
“It may not be that name that they use, but the important thing is we’re going to have that kind of a supportive group there available in all our schools.”
This is just wrong headed. Gay kids and their allies will have to join an "Equality group" that may in fact have people that are not sympathetic to queer kids or their issues. The effect will be to prevent queer kids from feeling comfortable about sharing. It could even be unsafe.
Perhaps as they did in the 1950's, queer kids will ask each other if they were a friend of Dorothy. That was code for "are you a homosexual like me."
Even if clubs are set up for queer kids and allies, if they can't call themselves the Gay Straight Alliance, we are teaching these kids that they're less than others. That Gay is a bad and not spoken of in polite circles.
The Globe and Mail editorial today says:
To be made nameless is not a small thing. It is to be told that some shame is associated with who you are. The clubs can exist but, depending on how the Catholic schools react, perhaps only in the closet, a place of shame.Kudos for this editorial. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Ontario Liberal government has such a hard time with the concept of a gay straight alliance. Further I cannot understand how a queer former Education Minister and a second queer Cabinet Minister can let this BS happen.
The MPP for Toronto Centre has a lot of explaining to do over this government bill.
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