(Vancouver, British Columbia) Conservative political action groups and the Roman Catholic Church are demanding the British Columbia government abandon plans to introduce a course next year that would include LGBT civics and material on gay marriage.

The course, called Social Justice, is still being developed by the Department of Education. It will examine a range of topics, including race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. The course, aimed at grade 12 students, would not be a requirement for students, but could be taken as one of the optional courses leading to graduation.

The leader of the province's Roman Catholics has assailed the course. Vancouver Archbishop Raymond Roussin says it could lead to "inappropriate and morally objectionable material" in the public school system.

In an editorial this week in province's Catholic newspaper Roussin says the course threatens the right of parents to control their children's education and calls on parents to pressure the government to abandon the project.

A political action group called Concerned Parents of British Columbia has begun lobbying school boards to pressure the government to drop the planned course.

(Surrey, British Columbia The Surrey, B.C., school board has settled with two lesbian mothers who complained about anti-gay rhetoric from speakers at two public meetings.

The board said in a statement it has changed its policies to protect against harassment and discrimination at future meetings within the Surrey public education system.

Kim Forster and Carol Pegura filed a discrimination complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal after the meetings, which discussed the use of kindergarten books depicting same-sex families.

Forster said Friday the board's position "will ensure that meetings in future would be tolerant and respectful of diversity, particularly of sexual orientation."

The mother of two said she was also pleased that the board endorsed an Education Ministry review "to ensure that there is inclusiveness and respect within the curriculum and program delivery."

Last May, the government struck a deal with gay activists Peter and Murray Corren to make course content more positive toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues.

Opposition MLAs and education activists reacted with frustration and skepticism to what they're calling the BC government's new bare-bones safe schools policy, introduced Mar 29. They say the policy falls far short of protecting queer students and staff from intimidation and harassment on the grounds of real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.

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"There is continual failure on the part of government and this has gone on for over a decade both [with] the NDP and the Liberals. The question is when will LGBT youth truly be safe in schools?" Chamberlain asks.

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"What we have now is nothing. Just flapping gums and paper. It's not going to change the lives of kids."

Here's my stab at it -- this tactic relies fairly heavily on the notion that there are only a few of these troublesome elements, that this is an operable cancer. The resistance comes from a bred-in-the-bone realization that the number of these people is not small, that such a program would affect the bulk of the population in the schools, both students and faculty.

Japanese society and Japanese individuals aren't actively hostile to gays [..] but the social dynamic is different in Japan. One can be out to friends, in some cases, but my students agree that if a man's company found out he was gay, while he probably wouldn't be fired, he would definitely never be promoted and his co-workers would socially ostracize him.

This is a very frightening thought for Japanese, for whom social inclusion is extremely important. Bullying is considered a big problem in Japanese schools, and the most common form of 'bullying' is one in which most or all of a class ostracizes one child. In America this wouldn't really be considered 'bullying,' but in Japan, students have committed suicide because of it. It's a very big deal. Gay Japanese know that the more out they get, the closer they get to that.

schools for gay students would help

Apart from creating the truly perfect world, own schools for gay students would help.

The City of Ottawa has quietly created a new policy that prevents the local gay and lesbian community newspaper from being removed from city buildings despite a complaint about suggestive ads inside.

Gareth Kirkby, managing editor and associate publisher of the Capital Xtra, told CBC News on Tuesday that the city did not announce the new policy, but he learned of it through a report sent to the paper's lawyer from the city's legal department.

The report said the paper comes nowhere close to the legal definition of obscene and any attempt to restrict the paper's distribution would likely be unsuccessful.

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Kirkby said he was happy the city came around weeks after his paper was temporarily removed from a recreation centre in response to a parent's complaint.

"This should never have been an issue," Kirby said. "And it should not have dragged on for seven weeks. It's absolutely absurd." Kirkby argued earlier that the availability of the paper was protected by the right to freedom of expression.

The Capital Xtra was temporarily removed from a recreation centre in February after a man complained about the suggestive advertising inside.

In February, a man complained to a city councillor that the paper was not appropriate for a community centre.

He had picked up the paper while his eight-year-old son was practising basketball, and said he was disturbed by ads that featured scantily clad men in suggestive poses with sexual words in the background.

With same-sex marriage a protected right in Canada, it can be tempting to regard the United States' continuing political struggle over gay issues as painfully behind the times. But a recent string of intolerant events and blatant displays of homophobia in this country suggests that Canada may not be as progressive as Canadians believe.

"Everyone likes to think that we're so far ahead of the Americans," said Helen Kennedy, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group Egale Canada.

"But we're constantly being reminded through human-rights complaints that we have a long way to go in Canada."

In Ontario alone, 68 complaints were made to the province's human rights commission on the grounds of sexual orientation between April 1, 2006, and March 31, 2007, with $243,599.23 paid out in monetary damages.

Other reminders of discrimination have been coming regularly of late.

The town council in Truro, N.S., voted last week against flying the rainbow flag at town hall during pride activities.

Last month, the Quebec Human Rights Commission awarded $10,000 to a gay couple who were being harassed by young people in their neighbourhood.

And in Saskatchewan, the mother of an 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted last year by pedophile Peter Whitmore recently told a sentencing hearing she is pulling her son out of school because a classmate keeps calling him "faggot."

In an effort to reinvigorate the discussion, Egale has invited the leaders of Ontario's provincial parties to an LGBT debate on Sept. 9, although only the Green Party has so far accepted the offer.

"We want to see what they are going to do to address some of our concerns as a community," said Ms. Kennedy, who hopes to play host to similar debates in other provinces and among federal party leaders.

And in Saskatchewan, the mother of an 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted last year by pedophile Peter Whitmore recently told a sentencing hearing she is pulling her son out of school because a classmate keeps calling him "faggot."

Is Wikipedia becoming a hub for propaganda?
Tracking website shows thousands of changes to articles originated from federal government offices


A website that tracks the origins of millions of edits to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, shows that computers inside federal government offices are responsible for more than 11,000 changes to articles, including some significant edits of entries about parliamentarians.

WikiScanner, a website launched on Monday by a U.S. graduate student, shows that changes to articles originated from computers inside a variety of government offices, such as the House of Commons, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Environment Canada and the Auditor-General of Canada. The site, however, does not reveal the identity of the individual who made the edits.

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One user, with an IP address that points to a government office in Ottawa, removed Wikipedia's entire entry on homosexuality several times on July 20, 2005, and replaced it with such sentences as: "Homosexuality is evil," "Homosexuality is wrong according to the Bible" and "Homosexuals need our help and counselling." The IP address responsible for that edit continued to deface the entry on homosexuality a total of 24 times between July, 2005, and July, 2006, and also edited more than 500 other Wikipedia articles on topics such as epidemiology, Ebola and Deal or No Deal (a TV game show starring a Canadian host).

It's been about a year since the attacks stopped, but Alice can't shake the memories.

The 14-year-old, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was beaten up repeatedly while walking home from Twin Lakes Secondary School. The reason for the violence, she said, was her openness about her bisexuality.

"They'd call me a fag and flamer and start making fun of me," she recalled.

She said her attackers were males and females who followed her off school grounds and assaulted her.

"Nobody ever stopped (to help) or said anything."

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Youths who want a peer to talk to about sexual orientation can call the Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line.

It is a toll-free, provincewide phone line for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited, queer and questioning young people.

The number is 1-800-268-9688, and the website is www.youthline.ca.

Last June, Reuters announced that only a single Canadian same-sex marriage was performed in Toronto so far this year, compared to 107 last year. The anti-gay crowd has, of course, framed the article, surrounded it with candles and gold, and trotted it about the country chanting something along the lines of “I told you so!”

Why, just this month Barabara Kay—an editorialist for the National Post—declared: “The conclusion they can fairly draw from [Toronto’s] stats is that gay marriage was never more than an ideological symbol.”

Now, ignoring for a moment that it doesn’t bloody-well matter how few Canadians apply for same-sex marriages—it’s about equality, not quantity—it turns out that Reuters got the statistics very wrong.

As of early August, 182 of the same-sex marriages issued in Toronto since January were registered to Canadian addresses, not just a lonely one; and, last year, 518 Canadian gay couples got hitched in the city, not 107.