Anywho….When the Ontario government amended the human rights code in 1986 to include sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination, there was no talk of drag queen story times, putting biological males into women’s prisons or having naked people parading in front of children with legal impunity.
Nor did it envision transitioning biological males competing with female athletes, gender-neutral bathrooms, or schools not informing parents of their child’s gender identity.
The intent of the amendment was to make sexual orientation a prohibited ground of discrimination – similar to race, place of origin, colour, disability and other factors – in five areas; employment, housing, services, unions and vocational associations and contracts.
The argument in favour of the amendment – as put forth in the Legislature by then Ontario attorney-general Ian Scott, who led off the debate – was based not on the mandatory celebration of sexual differences, but on equal rights for all citizens in the name of “tolerance.”
When the Ontario government amended the human rights code in 1986 to include sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination, there was no talk of drag queen story times, putting biological males into women’s prisons or having naked people parading in front of children with legal...
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“The purpose of this legislation is not to exalt their status, to permit them to break laws, or to alter any of the fabric of our society, but to give them the least they are entitled to as human beings …
Female rugby players are not used to feeling like they have been hit by a bus on the field. Or a truck. A veteran female rugby player, who plays for the Stoney Creek Camels senior women’s team, said she was hit so hard in a recent game, it felt like a man delivering the tackle. If this had...
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“It is not a question of giving privileges, extra rights or special status, and it never was. It was always a question of inviting those who provide services to examine whether, on an individual basis, the applicant should be entitled to that service.” Of course, that was then and this is now.
As evidence of the times back then, Scott was himself a gay man, but didn’t publicly reveal his homosexuality – although it was an open secret at Queen’s Park – until 1993, when his longtime partner died of HIV/AIDS. Scott, a highly respected lawyer, died in 2006.
In 2012, the then-Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty passed amendments to the human rights code to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as prohibited grounds of discrimination.
In light of this, it’s not hard to understand the societal tension caused by the transition over time from “tolerance” to what often seems the mandatory celebration of any and all initiatives advertised to the public as celebrating diversity on the issues of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
For example, professional athletes forced to make public apologies for the “thought crime” of not being on board with pride nights, or parents automatically condemned as haters for arguing it’s their job to teach values to their children, not the job of their child’s school.
Of course, there are people who hate others on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. That’s wrong and it’s why we rightly have laws against such discrimination.
But to argue that any hesitancy about any government action ostensibly designed to enhance gay, lesbian and gender-identity rights is by definition based on hatred is also wrong and inaccurate.