Groups both pro and con for SOGI 123 clashed outside the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows School District office Thursday afternoon.
About a dozen people stood on the sidewalk, right outside the office at Plaza Street and Brown Avenue, holding signs against the resource that is currently used in schools to address topics of diversity, inclusivity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
‘Groomers work here’ read one sign, while another read, ‘Sexualizing Children Is Child Abuse.’
Across the street, another 30 people turned out in support of SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity), also holding signs reading ‘If Facists are making sense, you need to reconsider your values’ and ‘Everyone has a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.’
Sharon Armstrong, a Maple Ridge resident, said she was at the rally for the children. She said she doesn’t agree with the amount of information children are getting in schools with SOGI – especially as a grandmother of six.
That’s why, she said, she made a sign for the rally that said ‘Let kids be kids’, and another one which said ‘Stop sexualizing our children,’ and another – she really liked – that read, ‘Uphold parental rights.’
“I don’t think we need to sexualize our children,” she said.
Parents should be the ones who are responsible for knowing what is taught in the schools, said Armstrong, noting that many – not only in Maple Ridge, but in B.C. and across Canada – are upset when they learn about what materials their children are being taught.
A man, who refused to give his name, used a megaphone to get his message through to the school district.
He said that everybody who works at the school board is guilty of crimes against children and sexualizing children under the guise of inclusivity.
“Leave the kids alone,” he yelled into the megaphone. “Children belong to their parents, not to the school board,” he said, accusing the district of grooming children.
“Pink and blue are pedophile colours, did you know that,” he asked the people standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the divide, pointing out a transgender pride flag that someone was holding.
Another person yelled across the street that he would buy them all some vibrators if they would just “leave the kids alone.”
One of those people on the other side of the street was Martin Dmitrieff, president of the Maple Ridge Teachers’ Association, who explained that he – along with others from the school district –were there “to make sure these voices don’t go unopposed,” indicating those against SOGI.
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“Our role as teachers in schools is very important to ensuring that all kids are accepted, all kids understand that they are important, and what the impacts of this does to our kids in schools is the opposite of that,” continued Dmitrieff.
“It makes them feel very vulnerable in schools, it makes them feel like if they come from a family that may be diverse in some ways, they’re wrong – which is completely inappropriate.”
Dmitrieff noted that it is important to educators that all children succeed in their schools – which means that they all feel included.
“And that’s our role in schools to do that, to create that safe environment, free from this,” he said nodding to the other side of the street.
Police soon showed up to make sure both sides stayed apart and to maintain traffic flow in the area.
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Kudzzy Kent-Yotamu, 18, who graduated from Garibaldi Secondary last year, was home from the University of Victoria for Christmas, when he heard about the counter-protest in support of SOGI.
He came out to the counter-protest because he felt that he should do something concrete for the people in the community he supports.
Being at the counter-protest is very personal to Kent-Yotamu because of an incident that happened earlier this year at his former high school, which he described as a “gender-motived or a homosexuality-motivated kind of hate crime,” where threats were made and people were followed home. It was an incident, he said, that shook him up a little bit.
“For the longest time all these people were just like theoretical, angry people, out on the internet, whom I never meet in real life,” he said. “Seeing this kind of hatred being generated is really concerning – especially in Maple Ridge.”