(I’ve reproduced this statement by Surrey Pride’s board of directors with very minor editing.)
Surrey Pride refuses to stand idly by while violent, inhumane, and queer-phobic individuals dangerously dehumanize not just the queer community but our education system, our health-care system, and our codified human rights.
The so-called “1 Million March for Children” and other similar themed events are not about protecting children, or empowering parents. It’s about removing crucial protections on the basis of gender identity and expression. It’s about ostracizing, and criminalising the rainbow community, something already attempted in Canada from the 1950s to the 1980s called The Gay Purge. It’s about dividing communities who are all fighting for equitable treatment by distorting the truth and pitting us against each other.
These groups are willfully and recklessly targeting libraries, schools, queer spaces, religious institutions and more in an attempt to harm Canadians. This is what stochastic violence looks like.
For those who honestly have questions, are unfamiliar, and want to learn more, speak to folks in the queer community, reach out to teachers, reach out to medical professionals, engage through dialogue, not fear. There are endless numbers of faith-based organisations, educators, health communities and more ready and willing to explore these topics with you and ensure empowerment of your safety and inclusion.
To be honest, silence is what got us here. To be perfectly clear:
You cannot be for women’s rights and be exclusive in the definition of womanhood. By definition that means you are against women. It is also abundantly clear that your patriarchal views do not see women as equal to begin with.
You are not protecting children by lying to them and teaching them to hate another community. Adults are bullying children, ignoring their truths, and weaponizing their own kids as agents of violence against other families.
The fabrication of lies on signs, via social media ignores publicly available curriculum information published by the Ministry of Education, planned over years by education professionals through careful, precise, age-appropriate, pedagogically sound means. Politicians do not write curriculum.
And so an ask, to one and all including but not limited to the City of Surrey, Surrey School Board, Surrey Teachers Association, Surrey Board of Trade, all media outlets, MLAs and MPs, Religious institutions, truly all of Surrey:
That you declare publicly your solidarity that queer rights are human rights,
That you will not condone any attacks against individuals, be they part of the rainbow community or not, because they stand up for Human Rights,
That the rainbow community exists, should be protected, and are not inherently dangerous.
James Baldwin reminds us “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression.”
The hate ends here. While we caution counter protesting without security measures, we support counter protests.
Board of Directors – Surrey Pride Society