Something brewing beneath transphobic ads in Ontario

10/05/2011
POSTED BY dentedbluemercedes

http://dentedbluemercedes.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/something-brewing-beneath-transphobic-ads-in-ontario/#more-2390

On September 28th, Charles McVety's Institute for Canadian Values pushed a proposed curriculum for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) into the forefront of the Ontario election, with a full-page ad published in the National Post.  The ad read, "Please! Don't Confuse Me.  I'm a girl.  Don't teach me to question if I'm a boy, transexual [sic], transgendered [sic], intersexed or two spirited..." as if diversity and anti-bullying education might somehow cause gender confusion for kids who aren't trans.  When Post publisher Douglas Kelly released an apology two days later, he acknowledged that the ad "exceeded the bounds of civil discourse... 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."  Even so, Sun Media, which almost seems to be fishing for a human rights complaint against it in order to more pointedly campaign against Human Rights Commissions, picked up the ad, running it in the Toronto Sun.  Following McVety's lead, the Ontario PCs have been distributing their own fliers warning about "Cross-dressing for six-year-olds."  PC leader Tim Hudak is now defending those fliers, and The Globe and Mail also notes that many of the points on them are deliberately misleading:

    Still, the PC flyer warns parents against classrooms that would introduce concepts such as "cross dressing for six year olds" and "reclaiming Valentine's Day [by celebrating] sexual diversity with a kissing booth."

I welcome this. I also sincerely hope the good people of Canada and elsewhere can, keep a cool head and some intelegence here and simply ignore these idiots.

Remember these gems from reactionaries:

The Jews will abduct our children to drain their blood for use in their heathan practices.

The Black men will rape our decent white women.

The Communists will abolish church.

The Muslims will kill us all then force us all to be Muslims.

Over reacting to this sort of thing tends to give it credability by encouraging the socially fearful to adopt an excuse to be violent.

The reactionaries are clearly becoming desperate. The signs have been there for a while. Things will probably get a little worse before they get better, but the example of the quite extraordinary apology from the National Post, (as I understand it, this is normally a very extreme, right wing journal), demonstrates that the idiots will become increasingly isolated.