To the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, in Legislature Assembled:
We, the undersigned residents of Alberta, petition the Legislative Assembly to urge the Government of Alberta to introduce legislation that requires children ages 5 to 15 to obtain parental consent before they become a member of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) or provide a sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI) self-identification to their school.
[For full details see 35 Min. Read – Explanation of the Need for the Petition]
- Most Albertans would agree, if creating a new so-called “inclusive” learning environment for LGBTQ students results in an unwelcoming, disrespectful, alienating and discriminatory atmosphere for a different group of students, this would amount to a double standard – welcoming and including one group at the expense of excluding and/or discriminating against others. Affirmative action policies, especially in the areas of sexual beliefs, values, morals and lifestyles are seldom win-win social phenomena.
- Alberta’s Bill 10 – An Act to Amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to Protect Our Children (Mar 2015) and associated changes to the School Act (2016), Education Act (2019), and key Inclusive Education policies, have created an unprecedented and hazardous alteration of the state-parent-child (state-family) relationship.
- The petition focuses on the clash of parent rights laws and student SOGI/GSA secrecy laws/policies in the context of the BEST INTERESTS OF MOST CHILDREN. Bill 10 legislation, often called “GSA Law” or “LGBTQ Student Rights Law,” fails in five areas:
- The irrationality of purporting to protect the health of some students, inevitably putting many others (wavering/confused/questioning/straight youth) at risk.
- The careless empowerment of students (ages 5 and up) to form unregulated, unsupervised, non-transparent, ideological, and peer-organized activist clubs.
- The new Alberta Education powers are exercised at the sacrifice of lawful parenting rights/responsibilities.
- The sanction of secret/independent SOGI self-identification, grants rights for which students, e.g. ages 5 – 15 (as contended in this petition), are not mature enough to safely decide free of parent counsel/consent.
- The education system is not equipped/qualified/organized to safely take over child-rearing and child welfare service roles for children “secretly” SOGI self-identifying and attending GSA and/or GSA Network activities.
- UCP policy that “Teachers, not politicians, should decide when it makes sense to engage parents” is unsound:
- Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) membership (46,000) is dead set against the responsibility.
- Teachers often complain about class sizes limiting their ability to know students.
- Students move grades (K-12) and in higher grades between many teachers.
- Students switch school levels and may move during a school year.
- Teachers are not trained/qualified/placed to make arbitrary/timely psychological judgments on sexuality matters.
- Conflicting views regarding SOGI set one teacher against another.
- Teachers don’t know what is going on in GSAs.
- Alberta Education is not mandated/resourced to encroach on Child Welfare and Alberta Health Services roles.
- ATA guidance for GSAs intends the “clubs” to be “safe spaces” isolated from parent oversight and used for indoctrination and political/ideological activism. Guidance reads:
- Plan activities to celebrate special days, such as National Coming Out Day, Day of Silence, Day Against Homophobia, Transgender Day of Remembrance, LGBTQ Pride Week.
- Clubs are characterized by social, educational and political activities.
- Build coalitions with other school and community-based groups.
- Focus on school climate and organizational change through outreach activities (e.g., diversity days, inclusive curriculum, pride week activities).
- Have an anti-oppression educational mandate across intersections of difference (race, gender, class, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression).
- Strive to move beyond tolerance.
- Other concerns regarding GSA clubs and GSA Networks include:
- School boards/principals cannot block/control GSA establishment, activities, or club naming.
- Clubs can bypass teachers, facilitators, principals, superintendents and school boards and appeal directly to Minister of Education for backing.
- Clubs can bring in outside allies/activists/entertainment.
- Clubs purport to be LGBTQ affirming “safe spaces,” limiting free speech to pro-LGBTQ ideologies, politics, and indoctrination.
- There is no age constraint for GSA membership.
- There is no need for parental awareness or membership approval.
- There is no limitation on the age spread for students in a GSA.
- There is no limitation on grade-level to start a GSA.
- There is no need for a club constitution detailing purpose, objectives, activities, facilitator/principal/school board roles and oversight.
- There is no need for prior approval of a club activity or for adult oversight of activity/event execution.
- There is no need to make accessible to public (students, teachers, parents) club purpose, objectives, allowed activities, oversight.
- There is no regulatory and accountability oversight of the Alberta GSA Network and associated LGBTQ activist/support agencies.
- Ambiguous laws and confusing policies leave parents in the dark and place children at risk:
- Who in the teacher-facilitator-principal-superintendent-school board chain has authority to tell a GSA what they cannot do or to decide when enough GSA-driven ideological/LGBTQ pride events have been carried out to achieve a welcoming school environment?
- When a student declares a transgender self-identity while at school, kept secret from his/her/ze’s parents, who takes on legal responsibility for providing professional psychological and medical care for the youth?
- Now that the state has put in place laws permitting GSA clubs, connected together through GSA Networks, and further connected to LGBTQ activist/support agencies, is the state obligated to provide sexually wavering/confused/questioning students (K-12) with equally well facilitated/accessible/assured, unbiased, and non-ideological human sexuality counseling? [Note, according to John Carpay, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, if federal Bill C-8 – An Act to amend the Criminal Code (Conversion Therapy) becomes law, parents could spend up to five years in jail for trying to help their son accept himself as a boy, or for helping their daughter to accept herself as a girl.]
- Who is liable in the case where a youth (age 5 to 18; grade K-12) is physically or mentally injured as a result of attending a GSA or GSA Network activity, without parental knowledge and approval?
- Laws promoting unregulated GSA clubs, connected to unfettered GSA Networks, further linked to ideological LGBTQ activist/support agencies, unjustly disadvantage sexually wavering and vulnerable youth. After decades spent by the political left deconstructing heteronormativity, it is no longer seen as desirable or necessary by “progressive” “inclusive” educators and law makers to promote heterosexuality in schools. Elevating SOGI ideology at the expense of heteronormativity confuses and misleads youth, putting more Alberta children at risk.