Swift Current event creates division and controversy
A public forum on sexuality and gender identity in Swift Current caused controversy and a protest action outside the entrance to the event at the Innovationplex, Oct. 4.
The event was hosted by Freedom Patriots SASK (FPS), which also organized the Sept. 20 march in Swift Current to oppose gender and sexual diversity education in Saskatchewan schools.
Pride organizations in the province raised concerns in the run-up to this event. They felt the public forum in Swift Current and a similar one with the same speakers held a day earlier in Yorkton presented a test for Canada’s ban on conversion therapy.
A group of around 40 protesters gathered outside the Swift Current event with Pride flags and placards expressing support for the LGBTQ2S+ community and opposition to conversion therapy.
The public forum was attended by around 150 people. Pam Wright, the FPS spokesperson for the event, read out a statement to this newspaper before the start of the forum.
“The purpose of our event is to provide awareness of the sexualization that is occurring in our schools and put a stop to it,” she said. “And yes, it is happening here in Swift Current and the Chinook School Division.”
She added that FPS and the speakers at the forum do not support torturing or harming children in any way, shape or form.
“The only way parents can protect and be an advocate for their children is if they know what they are learning in school and how their child is growing and developing there,” she said. “Neither government nor schools have any right to be teaching or propagating any value system, and that’s what gender ideology is.”
There were two speakers at the forum. The first presenter was author and public speaker Wilna van Beek.
She shared a personal perspective as a former lesbian who embraced chastity after committing herself to a Christian lifestyle in 2003. She spoke about being subjected to conversion therapy and said she is against any practices that force people to change.
She felt the sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) curriculum should never have entered the school system.
“I have said it for years that same sex attraction or gender dysphoria is unwanted and unchosen,” she remarked. “Unfortunately, there has come a shift in our culture. Not only is there tremendous peer pressure, but under the name of love and anti-bullying programs, LGBTQ gender ideology teachings crept into our schools and it’s no secret what it’s doing to our children, indoctrinating their innocent minds.”
According to Van Beek the focus of schools must be on equipping all children from all walks of life on how to be ready to enter the workforce.
“Anything outside of this scenario should be referred back to parents and if they don’t respond, reported to social services,” she said. “Stay in your lane. If you cross lanes and promote homosexual behaviour, you become guilty of grooming innocent children into doing things they are not ready for and they most likely don’t appreciate to start with.”
She has been encouraging parents
to remove their children from public schools, and she also did it during her presentation.
“It’s vital to provide and create safe places for our young children,” she said. “It begins at home. A safe place does not mean celebrating, affirming or encouraging a child to embrace something that can be detrimental to their well-being. A safe place means taking them by the hand, listening to them, protecting them from harmful ideology, walking this out together until the root is discovered and cut.”
The second forum presenter was author and public speaker Dr. Ann Gillies. She received a PH.D. in philosophy of professional counselling from Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The focus of her presentation was what she referred to as the dangers of gender-affirming ideology.
“That’s why we need to say there are some things in our hearts that we are concerned about for our children,” she said. “If you are an adult and you want to transition, that’s your choice. You can do that, you can live however you want. We’re not here to beat someone up. We’re just saying, leave our kids alone.”
She expressed concern that children are exposed to explicit sexual things at new levels and on a daily basis.
“So what we are seeing now, though, in our school system is a sexualization of children that is desensitizing them to the advances of pedophiles amongst us,” she said. “And you know, we have lots to say about the Catholic school system, a hundred and some years ago, and we don’t want that to happen again, and we don’t want our children sexually abused in school. There are more children being abused by teachers now than by the Catholic school system way back, I’m talking residential school.”
Her slide presentation included data and research references in support of her views about gender dysphoria in children and the use of puberty blockers.
“Parents have been intimidated and bullied into agreeing with a child’s irrational and unrealistic sense of self,” she said. “And the parent then is made to collude with a child’s delusion.”
She expressed opposition to schools allowing students to use different names or pronouns without parental consent.
“Erasing a child’s identity, because that’s what they’re doing in schools now,” she claimed. “That’s what they tried to bring in. Our government, our federal government, is trying to erase a child’s identity, their identity from birth, and keeping it from their parents, because they’re erasing that and replacing it.”
Southwest Saskatchewan Pride hosted a LGBTQ2S+ community care event at the Pride drop-in centre in Swift Current during the same time as the public forum.
Attendees at this alternative event were joined by a group who came from Regina to show their support and solidarity. One of them was Ariana Giroux, the executive director of UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity.
“We had a conversation about safety and about community and about joy and how those things kind of play together,” she said. “I’ve been saying to folks that the strategy for this anti-trans attack that’s happening across the province is one of disinformation for those who don’t know what’s going on and one to try and make queer people afraid. To make the members of the LGBTQ community scared and feel hopeless, because when we’re hopeless, we stop talking. When we’re hopeless, we stop fighting.”
A key part of her message was the importance of standing together and coming together in community as a way to keep themselves safe.
“Our community is afraid,” she said. “We are terrified, and we are finding ways to build solidarity, because it feels like there’s no other option. It feels like we are going to lose our rights and have to go back to the 60s and fight all over again for our right to be who we are, and that is terrifying.”