Gender-Bending Education?

By way of example, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario recently encouraged its members to begin teaching alternatives to Mother’s and Father’s Day opting instead to acknowledge what it termed ‘alternative’ names such as Love Day or GAMES Day in recognition of Grandmothers, Aunts, Moms, Even Sisters. The organization encourages its teachers to connect messages about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender lifestyles to the curriculum so that “all students feel validated and engaged” (The Toronto Sun, September 25, 2013, “Union Playing Games”). It encourages the use of LGBT books, media, and pictures as part of the everyday curriculum and including the “terms gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender when describing various families” (ibid.). The organization claims on its Web site that it is doing this as part of a social responsibility to produce a welcoming atmosphere for LGBT families as the “fastest growing type of family structure in Canada.”

A year earlier the Toronto District School Board found itself defending a decision to put posters up in school hallways throughout the system. These were no ordinary posters encouraging hard work, preparation for college entrance, or setting high academic goals. Rather, the posters openly encouraged all students to accept homosexuality and its byproducts as a normal alternative lifestyle. Hearts in varying colors were prominently displayed across the surface of the ideological advertisement. Stick figures representing people were shown standing within the hearts. In some of the hearts two stick figures, one representing a man or boy and the other representing a woman or girl, were shown standing side-by-side. In other hearts on the posters, two masculine stick figures were shown standing together. Likewise, some hearts displayed two feminine representations. In the center of the same poster was a giant heart over which were the bold capped words, “LOVE HAS NO GENDER.”