When principles lose all meaning
On Elenore Sturko's abandonment of community
I met Elenore Sturko a little after I finished my degree. I was visiting family in the Northwest Territories where she was working as a media liaison for the RCMP. My stepfather, in a lovely display of allyship, wanted the two of us to meet because she had been an advocate within the RCMP for queer people. We shook hands and chatted about Yellowknife, work I had done in schools, and where I should grab dinner with the family.
Like many queer people, I have complicated feelings about police. Still, it was good to see someone openly advocating within the RCMP. Sturko even wrote a book about her great-uncle being tossed out of the police force for being gay.
When years later I saw her announced as the BC Liberal candidate for the Surrey South by-election, I felt fairly positively about it. The party was still finding its way after the messy departure of Laurie Throness, who made the queer community a regular target of his. Sturko’s candidacy felt like a shift towards a more inclusive, less vitriolic BC Liberal party.
Sturko quickly made it clear her principles would not be compromised to appease the far-right section of the BC Liberals’ tent. She wrote op-eds about the importance of standing up to hatred. She was a strong supporter of the sexual orientation and gender identity policies the BC Liberals implemented, which are a constant target of far-right malaise.
When I graduated high school same-sex marriage was still illegal, and the Safe Schools Task Force had identified homophobia as one of the biggest challenges in BC schools. In the years that followed, queer youth had disproportionately higher rates of attempts at suicide. That meant dozens of BC kids every year would never grow up, graduate, fall in love or do any of the other things people do as adults. The constant loss and pain within the community was a defining part of the early 2000’s.
As a rural gay kid fresh out of a horrible school experience myself, I was one of many who fought for years to have explicit anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia policies in every school district. Each year I would take a leave from whatever job I had and spend a month speaking in schools in small towns about my own experience. It was a difficult time filled with a lot of push-back, protests and occasional death threats.
The BC Liberals were in government, and so they were the ones with the power to do something about it. After an advocacy campaign to bring the issue to the government, I got to meet with Education Minister George Abbott. He was supportive of taking action, and made some initial progress. Individually, school districts implemented their own policies. Later, North Vancouver-Seymour MLA Jane Thornthwaite took up the cause as Minister of State for Child Mental Health and Anti-Bullying. In 2016, the government finally introduced a ministerial order for all school districts to have an explicit anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia policy on their books. In addition, they introduced a series of guides and tools to help support teachers looking to include content about queer lives — at an age appropriate level — in their classrooms. The policies, guides and materials together were called the “Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Education Initiative” or SOGI 123 for short.
SOGI 123 has been violently misrepresented by opponents. It has been described as a mandatory curriculum, which it is not. It has been dismissed as forcing queer content on youth without reason, ignoring the ridiculously high suicide rate that preceded it. There is so much blatant misinformation about SOGI 123 that multiple school district websites have to have notices addressing all the myths.
SOGI 1 2 3 connects educators to proven tools and resources for aligning schools with provincial policies protecting people of all sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI). SOGI 1 2 3 focuses on three key areas: (1) policies and procedures (e.g., a school's code of conduct), (2) inclusive environments (e.g., safe spaces and welcoming language), (3) curriculum resources (e.g., SOGI issues integrated into classroom learning). When all three pillars of SOGI-inclusive education are implemented, students have the opportunity to flourish.
Spreading hatred towards queer people gets a lot of traction online, but when it actually comes to the ballot box, wanting to go back to the days of kids dying because of relentless harassment isn't actually popular. However, it gets enough attention to be a constant in every election.
Recently, however, there has been a backslide in support for queer people. On most questions of opinions regarding queer people — whether someone should be open about their sexuality; engage in public displays of affection; participate in sports; have equal access to medical care — support in Canada has dropped in recent surveys. This is in no small part thanks to the sustained attacks on queer people and the fact that people see it amplified online — giving the impression more people feel that way than actually do.
John Rustad’s BC Conservatives are full of familiar names to people who have been subject to these attacks over the years. If you read the text of that above article about anti-SOGI trustees, Heather Maahs and Korky Neufeld are mentioned — Maahs is now the Conservative candidate for Chilliwack North and Neufeld is running in Abbotsford West. A virulently anti-trans online commentator was Rustad’s by-election candidate for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant. The Conservative candidate for Courtenay-Comox resigned because of his multiple posts attacking the queer community.
Then there is the BC Conservative candidate for Vancouver-Point Grey, who has made no secret of his contempt for queer people, and Sturko specifically. He has referred to her as a “woke lesbian social justice warrior” and a “groomer”. By all accounts, it appears Sturko would have no place in Rustad’s Conservatives, and would be actively reviled by his candidates.
Whether this means anything to Sturko is anyone’s guess. She announced this week that she was leaving her caucus to join Rustad’s party anyways. The same day, she dropped her support for SOGI, aligning herself with her new party’s platform of scrapping the program saying, “what we've actually seen is that SOGI has become divisive.” The convictions which she began her term with vanished in the face of the opportunity to put her name next to Rustad’s party in Surrey-Cloverdale.
To be clear: scrapping the tools needed to create safe and inclusive schools means children will die.
I only met Elenore the once, so I cannot claim to actually know her. Still, it pains me that someone who could have been a voice for our community will instead give validity to an organization that seems to be specifically cultivating contempt towards people like us. Minor incidents can multiply, and rhetoric can turn into violence. This is something I thought Sturko understood, since she wrote a whole op-ed about it:
“The harassment and threats at the Victoria coffee shop is just the latest in what appears to be an increase in hate-motivated incidents in our province. If left unaddressed, incidents like this will also have an incremental impact on our society. One that erodes our sense of safety and community, creating fear and isolation once again. Not only for the LGBTQ community, but for any community that finds itself the target of hate. If one of us is not safe from hate, then none of us are safe from hate.”
-Elenore Sturko, June 22, 2022
When Sturko announced her run for the Surrey South by-election, I had hope she might make her party better. It seems she now stands for something very different than she did when she started. We are all the worse for it.
PS. This Pride Month, please consider making a donation to Out In Schools, which does presentations in schools that uplift queer stories through film, education and dialogue.