Editor's note: The rally begins at noon and runs to 2 p.m.
TORONTO, September 12, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The battle against the Ontario Liberals’ controversial sex-ed curriculum shows no sign of ending as a coalition of pro-family groups are urging parents and all concerned to attend a sex-ed protest rally on September 21 at Queen’s Park.
Organized by Canadian Families Alliance, the rally marks one year since Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s majority government pushed through the radical sex-ed curriculum in all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools despite unprecedented parental outcry. But, as Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) pointed out, sex-ed lessons were reportedly delayed until the final two weeks of the school year in many jurisdictions for fear of parental backlash.
“It is important for as many people as possible to attend this protest,” noted rally speaker Tanya Granic-Allen, president of Parents as First Educators (PAFE). “We know there are thousands upon thousands in this province who want Wynne’s sex-ed scrapped, but we need to show politicians, the media and the general public that this is so.”
The rally comes as Wynne’s personal popularity rating hits an all-time low and in the wake of a stunning Liberal defeat in the Scarborough-Rouge River by-election.
Although Progressive Conservative Raymond Cho won the seat, Queenie Yu, who ran as an Independent solely on an anti-sex-ed ticket, received a remarkable 2.32 percent of the popular vote.
Yu, a former PC Party staffer who worked as a fundraiser for the PC Ontario Fund, is a keynote speaker at the rally, as is federal Conservative leadership candidate Brad Trost, an outspoken pro-life advocate and defender of parental rights.
Yu’s run in the by-election made the sex-ed curriculum an unavoidable topic and may be why during the campaign the Progressive Conservatives circulated 13,000 copies of a letter in English and Chinese, in which PC leader Patrick Brown stated he would “scrap” the curriculum.
Although Brown then reneged on that, insisting he backs the sex-ed curriculum, CLC and PAFE are among those who contend the letter had the desired effect — to cause the riding’s majority of new Canadians opposed to the sex-ed program to reject the Liberals.
“Thanks to the recent by-election, which ended up being a referendum against Kathleen Wynne’s radical sex program for elementary school children, the question of repealing the curriculum is once again dominating Canadian news headlines,” noted Fonseca, CLC’s political strategist.
“Patrick Brown was made to bend to the will of parents, if only for a few days before recanting. This is proof that repealing the child abusive curriculum is a winning political issue,” Fonseca, who will also speak at the rally, told LifeSiteNews in an email.
“Parents must seize this momentum by turning up in huge numbers at the protest. Let’s keep building resistance from event to event, from strength to strength,” he added.
“In today’s society, our children need proper sexual information to protect themselves, but the new curriculum doesn’t serve this purpose at all,” noted Christina Liu of Parents Alliance of Ontario (PAO).
“I think parents need to come to have our voices heard, to have the truth revealed,” Liu told LifeSiteNew, “because whatever is out there in the society, it’s lies, not the truth. Our kids need to learn scientific facts regarding sexuality.”
The rally will raise “awareness for the society to realize that this curriculum has scientific defects,” she said. Because the sex-ed curriculum does not detail the risks of sexual activity, or “avoids anything negative with regard to it,” it “reveals the science selectively, so that it puts children into more danger.”
“This curriculum was written under the direction of a man serving a three-year jail sentence for sexual crimes against children,” noted Fonseca, referring to Ben Levin, who as deputy minister of education in 2009 is regarded as the architect of this curriculum’s first iteration, a 2010 version then Premier Dalton McGuinty shelved after parental backlash.
Levin was convicted of three child pornography-related offences, including counseling to commit sexual assault, in April 2015 and sentenced in May to three years in prison.
“Let’s remind the politicians in every party, the media, and the general public, that we do not want a convicted child-pornographer’s curriculum to be imposed on our kids and grandkids,” noted Fonseca, who pointed out that CLC has done a detailed analysis of the curriculum (here).
“We cannot quit. We must move forward, growing the number of those in the parental rights movement, towards the next election,” he asserted.
Other rally speakers are Charles McVety, who exposed the 2010 sex-ed curriculum and triggered then-Premier Dalton McGuinty to retract; Steve Tourloukis, Hamilton father of two who has taken the Ontario government to court to defend his parental rights; Lou Iacobelli, chair of the Parental Rights In Education Defense Fund, which is backing Tourloukis; 16-year-old youth activist Guinevere Santaguida, and Dr. Scott Masson, an academic who has been outspoken against the curriculum.
The September 21 rally begins at noon and runs until 2 p.m.
Several communities are organizing bus trips. For information, go here. To download a general poster, go here, a poster local organizers can modify to promote bus trips here, and to access the Facebook page here.