LifeSiteNews
By Lianne Laurence
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
To sign a petition to stop Ontario's graphic sex-ed curriculum, click here.
TORONTO -- Thousands of parents took to the streets Sunday
afternoon to protest the Ontario Liberal government’s radical sex
education agenda, marching through the heart of Toronto’s financial
district with the message “We say no! We say no!” and calling on Liberal
Premier Kathleen Wynne to resign.
There were at least 5500+ protestors in the march down University
Ave, according to a LifeSiteNews count that was corraborated by one of
the organizers after careful review of video footage of the entire line
of marchers passing by. During the rally and speeches at Queen's Park
preceding the march, also organized by the Canadian Families Alliance
(CFA), the crowd appeared to be even larger. Media, however report only
2,000.
Over 65 busloads, each carrying a maximum 48 protestors, came from
across the GTA, including Scarborough, Mississauga, Erin Mills, and
Thorncliffe Park to attend the sit-in and march that launched the CFA,
an umbrella organization representing over ten parent groups, six
cultural associations, and 200,000 concerned citizens.
The mood was not conciliatory as speakers expressed frustration with
the Wynne Liberals, while the crowd chanted noisily, “No more Liberals!
No more Liberals!” or “Resign! Resign!” and even at times, “Liberal
loser! Kathleen loser!” Speakers also vowed to make the sex-ed
curriculum an issue in the federal election campaign.
“We say no to the sexualization of our children!” CFA speaker and
retired teacher Lou Iacobelli told the June 7 rally. “We say yes to
parental rights!”
Iacobelli vowed the protests will continue if Wynne persists in
ignoring parental concerns. The CFA will call for the resignation of
Wynne and Education Minister Liz Sandals and hold more protests at
Queen’s Park and at MPPs’ offices.
Parents will pull their kids out of school in the fall rather than
subject them to this sex-ed curriculum, Iacobelli stated, adding that a
Syrian family told him they are contemplating returning to that war-torn
country to escape Wynne’s radical sex-ed agenda.
“Let’s call it what it is! It’s indoctrination!” Iacobelli told the
crowd. “Levin’s hands are on it” – a reference to Ben Levin, now serving
a three-year sentence on three child-pornography related convictions.
As Ontario’s deputy education minister in 2009, Levin was in charge
of curriculum development and is regarded as the architect of the 2010
sex-ed curriculum, shelved after parental backlash. The 2015 curriculum
is virtually the same. “Parents just don’t want it,” Iacobelli said. “It
isn’t science. It’s child abuse.”
But Wynne appears determined to roll out the sex-ed curriculum in all
Ontario’s publicly funded schools this September, despite the growing
opposition.
That opposition now includes the CFA 185,000-name petition presented
at Queen’s Park June 1 by MPP Monte McNaughton, a week-long school
boycott in early May during which an estimated 70,000 kids were pulled
from Ontario’s public schools, and numerous protests from London,
Ottawa, Windsor, and across the GTA, including several in Wynne’s own
predominately Muslim riding of Don Valley West.
At one Mississauga protest Wynne was shouted down by angry parents.
At another in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park, she escaped angry parents
outside a school by taking the fire exit.
After a six-member delegation met Wynne April 29 asking that the
curriculum be withdrawn, they reported that the Liberal premier was
“implacable.”
The Liberals’ only official response has been to launch a $1.8
million summer ad campaign that pro-family groups say deceptively
whitewashes the controversial aspects of the curriculum, which
introduces homosexuality in Grade 3, masturbation in Grade 6, oral and
anal sex in Grade 7, and teaches that there are six genders rather than
two sexes.
“Canada has never witnessed such a dictatorship,” CFA’s Maggie Amin
told the crowd, pointing out that the sex-ed curriculum “creates
division” between parents and children. “Our children will be taught to
challenge their parents.” She also noted that “our children and their
safety is a federal issue” and that federal Liberals “will no longer get
our support,” at which the crowd began chanting, “No more Liberals! No
more Liberals!”
“Our fight is not going to end!” vowed Sam Sotiropoulos, former
trustee for the Toronto Public School Board and CFA member. “Our fight
will continue for three years, we will not forget and we will not
forgive!” Sotiropoulos urged parents to protest to their MPP, and remain
vigilant over what their children are being taught. “If it takes
calling the police because a teacher is telling your child to go home
and masturbate,” then do it, he said. “Do not be mice!”
“I have never in my life been an activist,” said John Himanen, a
father of three elementary-school aged children in York Region District
School Board, “but I am now because of my children.” Himanen stressed
that parents will not be able to opt out as Wynne has promised they
will, because to do so will be seen as contrary to the Human Rights
Code.
CFA will keep fighting, Khalid Mahmood of the Thorncliffe Parents
Association, told the crowd. “We made history that we have submitted an
185,000” signature petition, he said. During the school boycott May 1 to
5, Thorncliffe’s schools reported a 90 percent absentee rate.
Wynne “must be scared,” he said. She must be having “nightmares” and
“can see her failure” in the amount of protesters who showed up June 7.
Meanwhile, another MPP showed up at the protest. Holding a
rainbow-coloured flag with an unidentified supporter, NDP Cheri DiNovo
of Parkdale-High Park said she was there to show support for LGBTQ
children, and that there are “six-year-old gays, lesbians and trans”
children.
Find a full listing of LifeSiteNews' coverage of the Ontario government's explicit sex-ed program here.