Statement from the BCFED
We enter Pride Season in a spirit of joy and celebration. Our solidarity with the communities that make up Pride is deeper than ever. The progress we’ve made together is immense, and we’re all the stronger for it.
That’s fortunate. Because the threat to the fundamental rights of 2SLGBTQIA+ people today is enormous — and imminent.
Governments in the United States and elsewhere have launched a brutal assault on those rights. And much of the Canadian right-wing — including governments in Alberta and Saskatchewan — has embraced that brand of politics, seeing an opportunity to sow fear and divide us against each other. They’ve made trans people, especially trans women, their specific targets.
Only tiny margins kept them from winning the BC and federal elections. John Rustad and the BC Conservatives in particular have made little effort to conceal their agenda, even hosting a homophobic lobby group at the BC Legislature.
Authoritarians won’t relent once 2SLGBTQIA+ people are pushed to the margins or beyond. It’s no coincidence that attack goes hand-in-hand with a backlash against reconciliation: Imposing rigid anti-trans and anti-queer dogma was baked into colonialism here and around the world. And these same forces are targeting gender equality, racial justice, climate action — and worker rights.
The tactics they’re honing with this campaign will soon be turned on anyone else who opposes them. We must stop them now.
And we can. The same extremism that makes them so dangerous has also helped keep them from power. Poll after poll shows their values are not mainstream BC values or Canadian values, and they certainly aren’t worker values.
We believe in moving forward, in ensuring everyone can take full part in the life of our community, our province and our country. We believe in ensuring every worker is safe from hate and discrimination, in the workplace and everywhere else. And we believe an injury to one is an injury to all.
Pride has always been about both joy and defiance, and above all about standing together. To 2SLGBTQIA+ workers throughout BC, and to Pride’s communities everywhere, we send our solidarity and strength. Together, we’ll keep pushing forward.