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Kathleen Wynne (blue dress) and partner at Gay Pride paradeOntario Premier's Office

TORONTO, December 13, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Ontario has enshrined a Transgender Day of Remembrance into law, and according to the bill’s sponsor, it is the “first jurisdiction in the world to do so.”

NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo’s Bill 74 passed by unanimous consent at Queen’s Park on Tuesday.

It proclaims November 20 as Trans Day of Remembrance and requires members of the legislature stand for a moment of silence that day.

“By observing a moment of silence, we express our respect for trans people in the face of indifference, prejudice and hatred and memorialize those who have died as a result of anti-trans violence,” the bill states.

The legislation was co-sponsored by Liberal MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers and Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was initiated in 1999 by transgender activist and writer Gwendolyn Ann Smith, as a memorial for transgender woman Rita Hester who was murdered in Boston on November 28, 1998, according to the TDOR website.

DiNovo claimed Ontario’s government is the first to legislate recognition of the day, tweeting:

Transgender activist Jordan M Ferguson, who identifies as “non-binary” and is lobbying for “non-binary” designations on birth certificates, health cards and passports, called for more of the same in a congratulatory tweet to DiNovo.

Well done @CheriDiNovo! Thank you for your work. Enshrining TDOR in Ontario sends out a clear message: transphobia can end lives. I hope that other provinces & our federal government swiftly work to enshrine similar legislation.

But Ferguson’s response underscores the possibility that entrenching a Trans Day of Remembrance in law may be seen by trans activists as a means to politically advance and force public acceptance of gender ideology.

Pro-family advocates say this is not what individuals suffering gender dysphoria — or as one transgender writer put it, the “despairing cross-sexed” — genuinely need.

“There were two known transgender deaths in Canada in the last 12 months or so,” noted Campaign Life Coalition vice president Jeff Gunnarson.

Transgender Day of Remembrance data reports that one trans or gender diverse person was murdered in Canada in 2016 to 2017.  Toronto police announced in November that a decomposed male body found in the city’s Rosedale ravine in August was that of transgender “woman” Alloura Wells.

“We need to properly mourn the deaths of all people, and when there are special circumstances, to acknowledge that concern. These include deaths of first responders, mothers and fathers who die saving their children, all marginalized people who die through abuse or neglect, not to mention the thousands of children killed in the womb,” Gunnarson told LifeSiteNews.

“But to single out the so-called ‘transgendered’ person with a law like Bill 74 is socially damaging because it gives credibility to the pseudo-science that says a man can be a woman and vice versa,” he said.

“Gender Identity Disorder is a mental illness, not a human right, and it is cruel to fabricate a new category of humans based on sexual disorientation,” pointed out Clinton Somerton, Campaign Life Coalition political bureau staffer.

“Psychological problems need to be treated and healed, not celebrated and memorialized in provincial law.”

Added Somerton: “To truly show respect and love, one must be willing to tell the truth about Bill 74: It is transhumanist legislation that seeks to erase the public’s fundamental awareness of human nature and the image of God in man.”

The Washington-based Family Research Council makes similar points in a policy paper “Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement” by Dale O’Leary and Peter Sprigg.

“A person's sex (male or female) is an immutable biological reality. In the vast majority of people (including those who later identify as ‘transgender’), it is unambiguously identifiable at birth,” they write.

“There is no rational or compassionate reason to affirm a distorted psychological self-concept that one’s ‘gender identity’ is different from one's biological sex,” note O’Leary and Sprigg.

“Neither lawmakers nor counselors, pastors, teachers, nor medical professionals should participate in or reinforce the transgender movement’s lies about sexuality — nor should they be required by the government to support such distortion,” they assert.

Canada has already enshrined gender ideology in law this June when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government passed Bill C-16.

The bill adds “gender identity and expression” as prohibited grounds for discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and to the Criminal Code provisions for hate crimes, hate propaganda and aggravating factors in sentencing.

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