Residents need to support a more welcoming community
By Lethbridge Herald on June 21, 2024.
Editor:
This Pride Month show your support for a more welcoming & safe community.
Research shows that sexual and gender diverse (gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, two-spirited, queer, intersex, asexual, gender fluid, +) people who experienced higher levels of family/friends support were less likely to report having suicide ideation, lower levels of depression, and lower misuse of alcohol and drugs compared with other sexual and gender diverse people from families that had lower levels of family/friend acceptance and support.
Change may start with an individual, but progress is paved when people stand together, proud and strong. Thanks to the brave and tireless efforts of advocates and allies alike, Lethbridge is a more welcoming and compassionate community for sexual & gender-diverse. But we still have a ways to go.
Many sexual and gender-diverse people continue to face harassment, discrimination, and violence simply for being who they are.
Inequality has no place in our society. Lethbridge becomes stronger every day that we choose to embrace diversity.
Increased homophobic & transphobic protests & online vitriol across Alberta & Canada and pending legislation restricting the health care of trans and gender diverse youth by Conservative government, call upon allies to become more active and more outspoken.
Events like Pride flag raising, pride parades, drag performances, and Pride festivals are about creating a more welcoming, inclusive, supportive, and safe community. We need to speak out when we see negativity, hostility, and threats in reaction to these activities.
If we are to build a truly responsible and respectful society, then we all must stand up and help foster a more just, humane, and understanding community. As Lethbridgians, as Albertans, and as Canadians, we can’t wait for this happen on its own; we need to make it happen right now, and we need to start in our homes, workplaces, schools, online, & communities.
Actively supporting sexual and gender diversity is a commitment to being open-minded, accepting of sexual and gender diversity, supporting each other, and creating a welcoming & safe community for everyone.
Look forward to seeing you at the parade and festival in Galt Gardens on Saturday.
#ShareKindness #YouAreLoved
Tyler Gschaid
Lethbridge
15-14
A welcoming community and one of the best festivals of the year!
always up for inclusion, love, respect, and a reason to celebrate joy.
Here’s to another successful event Tyler.
As someone who spent 32 years with the Royal Bank working in 16 different branches throughout this province and was manager of 7 of them I can honestly say I never met a gay person I didn’t like. They are some of the funniest and great to be around people I have ever known. On the other hand it infuriates me knowing what some have had to go through to survive in this world and are blessed that I wasn’t one of them. In my mind they are heroes for handling it as well as they have. I don’t know if I could have, how about you? There is something really special about them, isn’t there?
i do not agree that one’s sexual identity has anything to do with how “good” or “bad” one is. for example, among those that are gay, there are conservatives, liberals, vegetarians, carnivores, angels and sleazes.
Geez Biff, the minions downvote reality.
well, they sure love to downvote biff lol there are some that have so little to do in a day that they look for the likes of biff entries just to downvote.
btw – kudos to you for your tenacity, and your ability to shrug off the negs. we may not always share the same outlook, but i sure appreciate your grit, and favour your right and the right of each to express and hold onto their thoughts and perspectives.
it is odd, though, how people so quickly and easily create a stereotype around groups. tragic simplicity. i suppose the lack of an ability to avoid being black and white.
In bucks case, I think you confuse tenacity with being an A-hole.
not at all. buck has an outlook that requires those differing to go deeper on the basis of their outlook. what he does understand is that the basis for most “initiatives” in our system stemming from govts is wealth transfer from the public realm into the private hands of the well placed. indeed, it is the latter that actually determines the brunt of economic policy in the so-called free world; that, in turn, has profound effects on cultural and environmental outcomes throughout the planet.
paranoia will destroy ya
more destructive is giving over to ignorance. you seem like a sharp mind: how is it you dismiss as paranoia that it is not the masses that create policy – certainly not economic policy – but lobbyists for big corp and the ultra wealthy? ditto thecontinuing decline of our environment/ecosystems/habitats/extinction of species (was a major public concern at least as far back as the 1960s…yet, rather than improvements, just keeps getting worse, despite changing govt names from tweedle dee to tweedle dum(b) ad nauseam. ditto the living standard of the masses, which, based on what western societies call the middle class, has declined considerably since the 1970s. ditto the gross wealth grabbing and wealth held by the ultra wealthiest, which is ever at new highs. ditto the erosion of democracy and freedom and privacy.
not at all paranoia…but it could make one paranoid knowing there are so many too slow to see what is going on. socio/psychopaths running the show, caring only about their wealth accumulation and power show.
just a heads up for and the others that prefer foolishness to reality: the planet and its systems are naturally balanced and clean. what, then, has made it so toxic in just a couple hundred years?
not at all, and, i have come to see you as you see buck