Demonstrators on both sides of the debate over and gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights in schools agreed on one thing during dueling rallies outside Sarnia city hall.
“Leave our kids alone,” members of both groups sang, at one point.
Sarnia was one of many demonstrations, marches and school walkouts organized Wednesday in Canada by 1 Million March 4 Children, a group urging elimination of sexual orientation and gender identity teaching in schools.
Sarnia’s Diversity Ed Safer Spaces Canada group organized a counter demonstration.
A large crowd of supporters from both sides gathered Wednesday morning on the sidewalk outside city hall carrying signs, shouting slogans and making speeches.
“We’re out here to make sure our trans and queer youth know they are supported by adults and we want to make sure they’re protected and have a thriving and safe school experience,” said Diversity Ed founder Crystal Fach.
Just down the sidewalk on Christina Street, Carla Olson of Camlachie was demonstrating on the other side, saying, “I’m just standing for the kids.”
“I just don’t think it’s the school’s job to press this ideology on my children and my grandchildren,” she said. “I don’t think it’s the school’s job to raise my kids and keep secrets from me.”
“I think we need to focus our schools more on the education, like reading, writing and arithmetic,” she said.
Fach said the counter demonstration was intended to “hold space so that our young people know that there are people that care for them.”
“A lot of young people who come to our drop-in have experienced transphobia and homophobia at school,” she said. “They’re nervous. It’s unpredictable.”
“They’re scared their human rights are going to be taken away,” Fach said. “We’re just reassuring them that we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
In a speech at the counter-demonstration, Dawn Flegel, executive director of the Sarnia-Lambton Children’s Aid Society, said the agency’s message for trans youth is “you are important, you matter to us and you have the right to be who you are .”
The society is committed “to being anti-transphobic and to standing up for people’s rights, and our presence here today is part of us acting on that commitment,” she said.
Speaking at the I Million March 4 Children demonstration, Greg Mentley, a pastor at Shiloh Ministries in Wallaceburg, urged the crowd to “speak the truth in love.”
“You are a great number of people standing up for what you believe in,” he said.
“We believe it’s right to say to a child, ‘This is what we believe is normal,’” Mentley said.
Deputy Police Chief Julie Craddock said police monitored the demonstrations and they remained peaceful.
