Thursday October 8, 2020 | VANCOUVER, BC
by Mary P Brooke, Editor | Island Social Trends
On the Election BC campaign trail yesterday, a quick media session was called by the BC NDP at which incumbent candidate Spencer Chandra Herbert (Vancouver-West End) accused BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson of having homophobic views.
Wilkinson has repeated a few times during the current election campaign that the BC Liberal party is open to all — regardless of sexual orientation, race, place of origin, religious, or any other number of diversity factors. He has specifically mentioned that he has gay and lesbian family members and that he loves them all.
Chandra Hebert is saying that smacks of tokenism and falsehood, like people saying “I have a (______) friend” (fill in any aspect of diversity) as a way of indicating their lack of bias. Though who’s to say? How does one grow if not to acknowledge differences and then accept them.
Chandra Hebert Tweeted on Wednesday: “Andrew Wilkinson can walk all over every rainbow crosswalk he wants, but the fact is he has selected one candidate who defends hateful conversion therapy, bought ads in an anti LGBTQ magazine and chose another candidate who opposes rainbows because of…you get the picture.” And… “if the BC Liberals want people to believe they are against homophobia then they would stand against it, and not with people opposing LGBTQ rights.”
Wilkinson has been asked repeatedly by media about Chilliwack-Kent incumbent Laurie Throness and Langley East candidate Margaret Kunst. Langley Township councillor Kunst is under fire after voting against a rainbow crosswalk in her community. Throness has long been criticized for alleged anti-LGBTQ comments, the latest being his defence of conversion therapy.
MLA duty to stand up for gay rights:
“MLAs have a duty to stand up for gay rights,” said Chandra Hebert in the streetside news conference from Vancouver. “We have a duty to make our community safer for everybody.”
He says that in Wilkinson backing the BC Liberal candidate in the Vancouver-West End riding (where Chandra Hebert is the incumbent MLA) that the BC Liberals “are not standing for conversion rights, that they’re against equality… we don’t need a supporter of extremism… he’s not standing with British Columbians today.”
“It’s out there, we have to stand together,” said Hebert. He urged the reminder that “those who are often forgotten” should not be left behind in this chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and the socioeconomic change that is happening. He said it is “far too easy to marginalize and hurt people”.
“It’s the right thing to look out for the most vulnerable, they need that help and protection,” said Hebert.
BC’s opposition to conversion therapy:
Herbert mentioned conversion therapy and accused the BC Liberals of not standing in opposition to that.
The BC NDP has strongly affirmed that conversion therapy is nothing more than harmful prejudice disguised as a medical treatment and therefore the practice must be added to the criminal code of Canada.
“We are very proud that our party, as government, pushed this issue at the federal level with advocacy highlighted in a letter to federal Justice Minister David Lametti in 2019. In that letter (penned by Attorney General David Eby, Minister of Health Adrian Dix, and Spencer Chandra Hebert, MLA for Vancouver West-End ) that “conversion therapy is prohibited in our public health care system (in BC)”.
Just last week, the federal government followed through on their commitment to do exactly what BC called for, and began the process of adding conversion therapy to the criminal code.
Last year BC Premier John Horgan stated in a November 22, 2019 news release that “our government has taken steps to ensure, to the degree our jurisdiction allows, that this so-called therapy is not tolerated”.
A televised leaders debate will be held on Global TV on Tuesday October 13 from 6:30 to 8 pm.
