I’m not going to talk about Bill 10 in this column. I’m not even going to talk about its predecessor, private member’s Bill 202, which would have made it mandatory for Alberta school boards to allow their students to create gay-straight alliances (GSAs) whenever their students asked for them. I’m not going to talk about the deceitful act of creating a new bill just to squash another piece of legislation, and then punting the former when things got too heated to handle – tucking the issue away in the closet, so to speak, to be dealt with at another time. I won’t mention any of it at all.
What I will talk about is courage. I can’t even imagine how brave a modern-day teenager would have to be in order to ask for permission to start a GSA. Instead of applauding this behavior, however, our decision-makers wish to make this task even more daunting, forcing some of these students to have to go and convince their school boards that they should be allowed to have a safe space for LGBT and straight students to come together on school property.
What I will talk about is lip service. Vote-seekers love to spit out all the “anti-bullying” buzzwords. They will use empty dialogue and real dollars to show they care about today’s youth, yet here they are presented with a real-life, tangible chance to do something that could make a difference, and instead they look the other way.
What I will talk about are statistics. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, “LGBT youth face approximately 14 times the risk of suicide and substance abuse than heterosexual peers.” So much, I suppose, for protecting our most vulnerable citizens.
I can’t help but offer up a crude analogy here – and yes, it involves sports. Some coaches love to talk about penalties. They say the word “penalty” a lot, pleading again and again – at various decibel levels – for their players to stop committing these offences. They say the word so much that every time one of their players draws a flag or a whistle, they are allowed to throw their hands in the air and scoff. They get to feel like they’ve done their part. After all, they told their players not to do it.
Other coaches analyze the reasons why their teams are racking up the fouls. They ask questions. What kind of penalties are they? What time in the game are we committing them? Are we putting our players in the right position to be successful? Are we teaching the skills properly? In doing this, good coaches are putting the burden of improvement on themselves instead of passing the buck to a bunch of young kids.
A lot of the time, politicians talk about bullying like bad coaches talk about penalties. In this particular case – the one I’m not talking about – it feels as though this wasn’t done out of apathy, but instead out of a deep-seated fear – a fear that leads to closed-mindedness and animosity. When have these types of things ever ended up on the proper side of history?
I’m not going to talk about Bill 10 because the specifics aren’t as important as the message. Politicians talk about a “balancing of rights,” but doesn’t love and acceptance weigh more than hate and bigotry? Shouldn’t we be encouraging these kids to come together and open up a dialogue about their differences? Won’t that lead to less bullying and safer learning environments? Or is it just, “Hey, kids, stop committing penalties”?
To mix a few metaphors, it seems as though the ball was really dropped on this one – and that’s all I’m not going to say about it.
