Kelly

The Alberta provincial government (Canada’s version of Texas ?) is currently in the process of legislating possibly the largest step backwards yet this century, in terms of human rights (in Canada). 

Bill 44 is a Trojan horse piece of legislation that the gov’t is using to effectively limit the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.  Basically, while every other province has included sexual orientation in their human rights provincial legislation, since the historic (and Alberta created) Vriend case, Alberta has been able to avoid this responsibility for 10 years.  Finally, after pressure from just about everyone reasonable, the AB government has promised under bill 44 to include sexual orientation in it’s human rights legislation.

The story should end there. But it doesn’t. Included in bill 44 is a section that would enshrine “parental rights” as well.  This law would ‘protect’ the rights of parents to pull their children from "courses of study, educational programs or instructional materials, or instruction or exercises, prescribed under (the School)Act (which) include subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation."

I can’t even begin to describe the multitude of problems this starts to create. 

Restricting a teacher’s ability to speak about certain topics has the danger of silencing them when it comes to "controversial topics."  At best this is problematic in an academic setting, where topics will be avoided or skimmed rather than rigorously examined. At worst, ...