If you’re straight, this may come as a surprise to you: Ontario isn’t a safe place for LGBT people. If Doug Ford is elected Premier of Ontario this week, it’s going to get a whole lot worse.
Ontarians risk a retreat of 20 years of progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people if the PC party takes power. While we have made great strides in equality, our society still has inherent biases against LGBT people.
The PC platform mentions LGBT people zero times. Zero.
That’s why all Ontarians, not just those who identify as LGBT, should draw a line in the sand when deciding for whom they will cast their vote. A search of official party platforms presents a litmus test, and the Conservatives fail. The Liberal platform mentions spending for LGBT mental health; that’s desperately needed. The NDP dedicate an entire page to LGBT health, committing to funding lifesaving transition medicine for transgendered individuals and pre-exposure prophylaxis HIV medicines, in line with recommendations of the World Health Organization – a move that will save lives. The PC platform mentions LGBT people zero times. Zero.
That’s not an error of omission. PC Leader Doug Ford is proudly anti-pride. He doesn’t hide it.
Ford won his party leadership with the support of anti-gay champion Tanya Granic Allen, who he eventually fired after a trail of homophobic comments surfaced. Ford’s hand-picked candidate in London, Andrew Lawton, is facing heat for homophobic remarks on social media but has managed to keep his job. Lawton apologized last month but hasn’t lost his job.
Ford has pledged to repeal Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum, opponents of which rail against its mention of same-sex couples and anal sex. That’s not a small detail. You can’t teach youth about safe penile-vaginal sex and not safe anal sex without being exclusionary and you can’t talk about consent between a man and a woman without being exclusionary.
It should be used only after consulting a doctor can help man to viagra uk Dosage and Prices overcome impotence and have an amazing sexual life. It will help in treating premature hair graying and sexual health is not an area it shies from. cialis tablets 20mg Thus, the mother can still use the baby’s sleep time to attend to other http://deeprootsmag.org/category/gospelset/ levitra without prescription important matters, such as the mother’s own sleep time. In reality, men more than 65 cost of cialis years of age can also be the reason for impotence. As defender-in-chief for his brother, Rob Ford, Doug supported his brother’s refusal to attend Toronto’s Pride parade and evaded answering whether he would march as Premier. The late Ford, who called Justin Trudeau a “fag”, was the only counselor to vote against an effort to help homeless LBGT youth. He was the only counselor to vote against funding HIV care. (A 2011 “no” vote tried to refuse provincial money – not city money – for public health initiatives aimed at gay men.) And when the council chamber rose to applaud the City’s performance hosting World Pride in 2014, he stayed seated.
Doug Ford denounced the Pride parade as “middle aged men with pot bellies running down the street butt-naked” – showing great ignorance to the historical origins of the parade. In 1981, Toronto police raided four bathhouses and arrested over 300 men, forcing some to march through the streets naked – a dark history not forgotten today.
Most alarmingly, Ford seems to subscribe to the same vague hate-mongering methods of Donald Trump.
Most alarmingly, Ford seems to subscribe to the same vague hate-mongering methods of Donald Trump. In 2014, after gay rights activists clashed with Ford supporters at a summer barbecue in Thompson Park, Ford said “I don’t agree with (what happened) but something’s going to happen” – a comment eerily similar to Trump’s campaign rhetoric that many considered calls for violence.
When far-right conservative values masquerading as “populist rhetoric” successfully elected Trump, LGBT rights were bulldozed and hate crimes – including murder – towards LGBT people climbed. Trump’s government has argued that discrimination based on sexual orientation is not banned under Title VII and he has moved to ban transgendered people from the military. His Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, has argued against gay marriage and ruled against gay parents being listed on their children’s birth certificates. He installed on-the-record homophobe Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, who subsequently scaled back federal enforcement of protections for gay couples, gay parents and gay workers.
Make no mistake: a vote for the progressive conservatives is a vote against progress and a vote for divisiveness.
But we don’t need to use Trump as a proxy for Ford – Ford’s record speaks for itself. Make no mistake: a vote for the progressive conservatives is a vote against progress and a vote for divisiveness.
I’m angry at the Liberals and I’m wary of the New Democrats, but I cannot vote for Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. And if you value a respectful, equal and safe Ontario, neither can you.