A local woman hopes a rally she has planned for Thursday night will show organizers of an anti-SOGI 123 event that New Westminster is a city that values love, acceptance and inclusion.
Shannon Dolton is inviting people to come out Thursday night to show “peaceful opposition” to a Stop SOGI 123 gathering planned for the same night. Dolton saw the anti-SOGI event circulating on social media and knew immediately she had to do something in response.
“I knew as a resident of New West and a member of the queer community that I could not let the voices of intolerance be the only voices heard about this important issue in New West,” she wrote in an email to the Record.
The anti-SOGI event is being hosted by the Canadian Council for Faith and Family Values, a New Westminster-Burnaby-based group created in response to the Ministry of Education’s decision to adopt SOGI 123, or Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity last year.
Speakers include 700 Club host Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson and Jenn Smith, a transidentified man, and it is taking place from 7 to 10 p.m. at 320 Eighth St., according to an event write-up on Facebook.
“We’re very concerned about the gender-fluid teaching that is going on in schools. It’s a fairly new thing to come into B.C.,” Thompson told the Record.
Thompson said her group is not a hate group and has hosted many meetings like the one planned for Thursday. Turnout ranges from 30 to 200, she added.
“The purpose of the event is to show information that is very shocking to most people who hear it. To make parents aware that Schools B.C. is rolling out SOGI,” she said.
SOGI 123 is an initiative developed by the Ministry of Education in partnership with ARC Foundation and the B.C. teachers’ union aimed at helping educators make schools inclusive and safe for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities. It was officially adopted provincewide in 2016.
In New Westminster, the school district has had some kind of LGBTQ inclusion policy since 2013. It began as an anti-homophobia policy in 2011 and last year was renamed SOGI 123 in keeping with the provincial policy.
Dolton hopes her rally will show members of the LGBTQ community that New Westminster supports the SOGI 123 policy.
“Everyone has a sexual orientation and a gender identity, what SOGI does is ensure that children of all orientations and all gender identities have the same rights to feel safe, supported and free to be themselves. This is not about creating special rights and privileges for one group over another, it is simply about creating equal access to safe spaces for children to express themselves without fear of harm,” she wrote.
New Westminster = Love is happening outside the Free Methodist Church, 320 Eighth St., on Thursday, Aug. 2 from 6:15 to 8:15 p.m. For more information, click here.
