Discussion over the introduction of SOGI teaching resources in Chilliwack reached a new low last week with news that a school trustee had singled out a parent volunteer for attack.
Barry Neufeld sent out a mass email New Year’s Day, urging his supporters to “push back” against criticism for his opposition to sexual orientation and gender identity resources in schools.
In a letter posted just after midnight Jan. 1, Neufeld accused Justine Hodge, chair of the Chilliwack District Parent Advisory Council, of joining forces with “the radicals who are calling for my resignation.”
The letter is personal, calling her “very activist,” and suggesting she’s seeking election as a trustee this fall (something she flatly denies).
Neufeld’s latest outburst is disappointing on several fronts.
First, it’s unfortunate that an elected official would use his position to orchestrate a campaign of intimidation against an individual parent simply because he does not like the decision made by the committee that parent represents. At an emergency meeting following Neufeld’s continued use of social media to discredit SOGI and question education ministry policy, the Chilliwack District Parent Advisory Council unanimously called for Neufeld’s resignation. It said it had lost confidence in the trustee’s ability to fulfill his obligation to provide a safe and inclusive environment for staff, students and parents who do not fit his model of “traditional family values.”
Neufeld’s response was to tell his supporters to take direct aim at Hodge.
Since then she has received multiple letters – some with enough vitriol and hate to warrant a call to the RCMP.
Equally unfortunate is Neufeld’s continued effort to skew the debate by misrepresenting what the SOGI teaching resource entails, shifting it instead to how society should handle people whose gender identity falls outside the rigid classification of male and female.
In doing so, he continues to foment fear – suggesting SOGI is part of a dark conspiracy to turn children into something other than what God made them.
The fear is echoed in many of the letters responding to Neufeld’s call to “push back.” They believe the lie that SOGI will teach children to question their gender identity, encourage them to experiment sexually, and normalize “deviant” lifestyles that their parents would be powerless to stop. “Poisoning of young minds with state-sponsored values and progressive levels of pornography and sexuality,” one writer calls it.
Writes another: “What I find most sinister about this whole thing is how its being used as a tool to extinguish the divinity within us, paving the way for a Nazi Transhumanist future.”
That people continue to have strong feelings about this topic is not surprising. (It was only a few years ago that homosexuality was illegal; that “treatment” involved chemical castration, electric shock and surgical lobotomies.)
But that concern is off point, and has nothing to do with SOGI.
SOGI does not teach anything. It fulfills BC Supreme Court and BC Human Rights requirements by discouraging bigotry based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In doing so, it decreases the incidence of suicide and depression brought on by bullying and intimidation.
Unfortunately, Neufeld’s letter writing campaign suggests that bullying and intimidation still have a home in the Chilliwack school district.
Greg Knill is editor of the Chilliwack Progress
