I have difficulty understanding the continuing lack of political will to have “sexual orientation” specifically included in our provincial human rights legislation. It should have occurred years ago, and didn’t. Gay and lesbian groups started lobbying the provincial government to have it included in the legislation in the early 1980’s, with no success.

Following the 1997 Vriend Decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, sexual orientation should have been not just “read into” the act (not a bad first step, but not what was needed) but actually included, along with other protected characteristics. That the Government of Alberta has continued to drag its heels on this issue for a further 12 years is shameful.

If Lindsay Blackett, the Minister of Culture and Community Spirit, under whose administration falls the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission and the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act (formerly known as the Individual Rights Protection Act), is successful in finally including sexual orientation as a protected characteristic then there appears there will be a backlash from “concerned parents.”

The involvement of parents in their offsprings’ lives is not something one wants to mess with and nobody, least of all the GLBTQ community, is suggesting otherwise. Clearly, it is the parents who should decide what values, mores and views are imparted to their children; that is the responsibility that goes with being a parent and is easily accomplished within the home and within the framework of the family.

But is there a line? Do parents have the right, if that is the correct word, to demand schools not teach their offspring information that may, or actually does, run contrary to their own view?

Offhand, the answer would appear to be simple. But, like everything else in life, the answers are anything but simple or straightforward. What we have here is a conflict of rights and in such instances there are no simple answers.

The latest controversy around parental rights centres on whether or not parents can withdraw or disallow their child to be “exposed” to information about certain aspects of sexuality, sexual orientation issues, or evolution versus (so-called) Intelligent Design/Creationism.

The reaction against their child being “taught homosexuality”, for instance, is based on the erroneous and rather bizarre notion that any affirmative information about homosexuality will lead to the child somehow becoming gay or lesbian themselves. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, but of course it is in the eyes of such individuals.

This is never stated outright. Instead, code words are used; “taught homosexuality” which suggests some sort of instruction in the actual mechanics of homosexual sex or that teachers can, by simply discussing homosexuality in a classroom setting, somehow create a homosexual out of a formerly heterosexual individual. Certainly lesbians and, more specifically, gay men have been accused of doing exactly that for years...”recruitment,” “seduction,” “corrupting youth,” “having an agenda”; the list goes on.

A big fear, apparently, is the “normalizing” of homosexuality. Again, suggesting that if kids view homosexuality as normal, as simply a part of a whole spectrum of sexual expression humans experience - it is a spectrum, by the way - that this will lead, at the very least, to experimentation if not actually “converting” their offspring.

Well, first off most youths “experiment.” It is not unusual for two teenage boys, for instance, to give mutual masturbation a whirl or even oral sex. Some might go so far as to try anal sex with a buddy, but that is rare.

I don’t know whether or not the level of experimentation is as high amongst teenage girls as it is amongst boys. I can only speak from my own experience and when I was a young teenager it was not all that unusual for guys to “mess around” a bit with a buddy or two. It didn’t mean anything, at least not to those who were actually heterosexual. For me as a budding young queer it often did, on the rare occasion I was included in such experimentation. There was usually an emotional quotient to it that my heterosexual buddies simply didn’t have. But that’s a whole other topic....

I happen to believe that discussing homosexuality, and doing some education around the discrimination faced by lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transsexuals (even though transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual orientation issues and is only politically related) is important. To me, it is no different than, say, discussing anti-Semitism, racism or sexism.

Some years ago, when I was involved with Gay Lines Calgary (the information and peer-counselling service that eventually became the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Association and today Calgary Outlink) and AIDS Calgary, I was sometimes called upon to speak to high school classes. I enjoyed giving such talks and answering questions from students. Did I instruct them on how to perform homosexual acts? Of course not.

If I was speaking on behalf of AIDS Calgary (which I co-founded and was originally a board member then later a department coordinator) homosexuality wasn’t the focus anyway, safer sex was. I made sure the talk included all aspects of safer sex practices but also made sure the information was included in a natural, inclusive matter-of-course manner. I didn’t dwell on anal sex - and the school was usually quite concerned about such references anyway - but on how to protect oneself against the transmission of HIV, regardless of what sex act an individual was involved in.

When speaking about being homosexual I focussed on the social/cultural/political/day-to-day aspect of being part of a minority facing discrimination and attempted to dispel various myths about homosexuality. The Q&A aspect was something I valued and the questions were almost always respectful; the students were interested in what my experiences as a homosexual were like, not in what my homosexual experiences were. Which is as it should be.

I was frequently surprised by the level of sophistication the questions had. Talk about having pre-formed ideas. Some of the questions were naive, sure, but many of them revealed a fairly good understanding that homosexuality was simply another way of being, and that homosexuality wasn’t contagious. A few students believed homosexuality was “wrong.” When challenged on why or in what way, they almost invariably fell back on a rather typical teenage response of “because it just is...it’s not normal.”

What is normal? I’d ask. Not so much to undermine their values, or what they thought were their values (but were, I suspected, more their parents’ values), but to get them to think critically. If by normal they meant what the majority does or believes or thinks, then sure. In that instance, having red-hair or being left-handed isn’t “normal” either. But if by something not being normal they meant being abnormal, then we needed to explore that.

As far as I was concerned, they were free to believe whatever they wanted to, as long as it was based on facts and not on prejudice or misinformation. If the thought of two guys, or two women, being intimate grossed them out, so be it. To be honest, the idea of vaginas kind of grosses me out, so there ya go. Most gay men are grossed out by female genitalia, and that’s fine. Where it becomes not fine is when that ambivalence or even antipathy spills over into discrimination and outright attack. The students got that. It’s a shame their parents sometimes can’t.