TORONTO – A poster that tries to teach kids about differing gender roles, and sexual preferences is drawing the ire of some members of the public who argue the various posters go too far, and promote polygamy.
Part of the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) “Safe and Positive Spaces” campaign, the posters tries to teach kids about gender roles, and sexual preferences that differ from the traditional nuclear family.
One of the posters, titled “Love Has No Gender,” shows various bathroom sign style stick figures with members of the same, or opposite sex, encircled by a heart. The offending cartoons are a man with two women, and a woman with two men.
“Well there was a series of posters, the one that some people believe promotes polygamy, I think is incorrect to assume that promotes polygamy. The exact images in question have a man and two women, and another one with a woman and two men.
This is not to say that a relationship between three people. All it is trying to depict is that a person can depict either gender,” Ryan Bird a spokesperson for the TDSB said. “To suggest that this is teaching kids about polygamy is just patently false.”
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Another poster, titled “There are no rules for being a Boy or a Girl,” offends some as it appears to show boys dressing in traditionally girl’s clothing.
Bird though says the offending photo, of a boy dressed as a girl, was a photo taken of a boy who was dressed for Halloween at the time and was consequently bullied and harassed while at school. The posters, Bird says, are trying to fight that bullying.
“The overall sentiment of that specific poster was to say that the stereotypes around gender whether it be girls can’t play with trucks, or boys can’t play with dolls, are just that they’re stereotypes and don’t really represent reality,” Bird said.
Other groups, though are not so positive about the messages that may be portrayed in the posters.
The conservative blog, Blazing Cat Fur which wrote a post about the posters writes the school board “Promotes Polygamy, Group Sex To Children” with the posters.
Charles McVety of the Canada Christian College said the posters amount to “psychological child abuse.”
“They are targeting them saying that it’s ok to have love with three people, or have love between sexes, these are not things parents want when they send their children to school,” McVety said. “These are not posters in and of themselves, like any poster, they are part of a broader campaign. And the broader campaign here is to educate the children in the way they want to educate them. Not the way the parents want.”
Doretta Wilson, the Executive Director of Society for Quality Education – an activist group promoting education – suggests that a problem with the posters may not be whether or not the images are appropriate, but whether or not parents were consulted prior to the posters being distributed to schools.
“It was a case of the school board being very well intentioned and trying to comply with the safe schools act, but I think they may have become a little overly politically correct and maybe waded into a mine-field and not really gauged the reaction of some parents,” Wilson said.
The posters were distributed to schools three years ago, Bird tells Global News, and the decision to post them was left to the administration of each school.
The TDSB currently does not know how many posters were put up in schools, or if any posters are still in use.
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