Last week, president of the Institute for Canadian Values, evangelical Christian leader Charles McVety, ran a transphobic ad in The National Post with a doe-eyed little victim and the message “PLEASE! Don’t confuse me. I’m a girl. Don’t teach me to question if I’m a boy, transexual, transgender, intersexed, or two-spirited.” The paper has apologized for the ad, but why did they even run it in the first place?
The paper’s apology reads in part:
The National Post has procedures in place for vetting the content of advertising, especially advocacy advertising. The procedures are intended to ensure that such ads meet a standard of tone and respect that is consistent with furthering constructive dialogue about important public policy issues.
In this case, those procedures were not followed…
Where the ad exceeded the bounds of civil discourse was in its tone and manipulative use of a picture of a young girl; in the suggestion that such teaching “corrupts” children, with everything that such a charge implies; and in its singling out of groups of people with whose sexuality the group disagrees.
OK, so someome was asleep at the wheel. At least the paper has agreed to donate the ad’s proceeds to an LGBT organization.
Meanwhile, we have contacted the Ontario School Board Department of Curriculum to see if the ad’s central premise—that kids pre-K through third grade are in fact learning about gender identity—is in fact true. If it is, it will be interesting to see how the district handles that curriculum and its overall educational utility (ie. what they are learning and what the desired results are).
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Cam
“OK, so someome was asleep at the wheel”
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That’s always the excuse when some bigot let something bigoted through.
Gayanon
@Cam: No, sometimes, it’s the “We have no problem with you but we received complaints” excuse.
Little Kiwi
Update: The Conservatives lost the election last night in Ontario. Liberals won with a minority provincial government.
The Curriculum will indeed mention LGBT people – this is, however, not going to be “teaching 6 year olds about anal-sex”
it will be addressing homosexuality in sex-education and puberty classes, as well as LGBT-Outreach. My mother, for example, goes to different schools (elementary to high) to talk about being the mother of a gay son, and about the need for students to understand what “LGBT is” because they do indeed have classmates who are LGBT, and will indeed be meeting LGBT people in their lives.
What this ad showed is something that millions of Canadians have been furious about with the conservative Government for years – an attempt to utilize a GOP-style campaign of lies, mistruths, and rhetoric to sway the feeble-minded folks in the country. It has largely backfired, big time.