I am writing to express my concern regarding the editorial cartoon in the Feb. 16 Gazette.
The depiction of the bathroom door in conjunction with Bill C-389 promotes the misinformation about this important human rights legislation. Bill C-389 is fundamentally a bill to ensure that transgendered people are protected in the same way that other Canadians are regardless of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, or sexual orientation.
At present, a transgendered person can be discriminated against in terms of housing and employment. We would all agree it would be unconscionable for someone to be evicted because he was from Somalia or fired simply because of her sex. Yet this can and does happen to people who seek to live as the gender they truly are internally, rather than as they appear physically.
Presently, someone who commits an assault against a person because they ‘discovered’ that the person is transgendered can be acquitted on the grounds they were ‘afraid’ of the person. These are the fundamental issues of Bill C-389, not bathrooms as the cartoon promotes. I encourage everyone to become informed of the issues and not simply respond to the disinformation of others. Our Canadian values of protecting human rights demands we be informed.
Rev. James Ravenscroft, St. Albert United Church
