Danielle Smith delivers primer on denying transgender care

One sentence is all it took to start changing Danielle Smith's anti-transgender narrative.

Politicians know when they’re losing; some will double-down and some will regroup and try again.

This may require a bit of background because I am certain most people (even those who read this) would rather avoid places I go — like gatherings of the fringe right wing. I go because I see certain ideas or sentiments pop in conservative politics and I like to know the source.

While I have no problem passing judgement on the following, I have kept it as free from that as possible because I hope to explain it as it is, so that I can better explain what’s happening outside of it.

First, parents on the fringe care about their kids. While most parents are probably more concerned about the fact that their kids have lockdown drills in case of a school shooting, parents on the fringe are concerned about a much different threat: the LGBT agenda. Yes, that is perceived as a real threat.

My first encounter with these parents was at the UCP’s inaugural convention in 2017. They look like parents I’ve seen around the parent circuit over the past 22 years but, not quite. In the same way I imagine look to them like other parents they’ve seen but, not quite.

My second encounter with these parents was in Medicine Hat in 2018, at the injunction hearing for the NDP’s Bill 24. They prayed for divine assistance. The judge did not get the memo.

These are parents who believe that God’s children are in his likeness, but can be human and also female if that’s what you deserve, and that of Jesus, but allowed to be sullied by sexual activity for the purposes of procreation within the confines of marriage. It’s a way of life with which I am only somewhat familiar — as in, I know it exists.

These parents also believe, as the Bible tells them, that being non-heterosexual and non-conforming to gender expectations is something their God does not like. Jesus avoided that political football.

Therefore, doing everything possible to change someone who is not attracted to the opposite sex, or doesn’t wish to conform to gender roles, is simply what would be required of a parent — like helping them learn to choose their friends wisely or set personal goals.

At the root of this understanding is a belief that with enough love, guidance, and pressure, one can change their sexual preference. This is important because believing, deeply, that it is possible to change someone’s sexual orientation in this way also requires them to also believe it is possible to change someone’s sexual orientation generally.

Now, despite the fact that gay people existed long ago enough to have earned a mention in the Bible, it is prevalent within certain circles to believe that without knowing being gay is possible, people would not be gay — especially children. Despite the fact that many gay children have heterosexual parents — though not all because in compliance with common laws and societal norms in the past few thousand years that required gay people to hide who they were, some people are direct descendants of gay people — this belief persists. And I digress.

That underlying belief is what allows the fear of an “LGBT agenda” to also persist.

No matter how we feel about the belief, nor how many people will scream from the rooftops that they didn’t need to learn they were LGBTQ2S+, it is of no consequence to the fact that the belief exists.

Recall next how the practice of conversion therapy came to be banned in many municipalities during the last few years of the 2010’s.

It was a victory to many who had been subjected to it, as well as those who were sympathetic to the heartbreaking stories from those forced to endure it, but it was also an attack against the parents who believe in the healing power of brainwashing. Or prayer. Or both. I’m trying, folks — I really am.

The banning of conversion therapy was a direct attack on these parents and their beliefs. They were accused, mostly indirectly, of child abuse. They were demonized by a broader narrative that took years of research and a wider public acceptance that you’re attracted to who you’re attracted to — and no amount of support, or fear, can change that fact.

And the general public has, directly or indirectly, demonized those parents as well.

While I would like to believe that it was the decades of research that made it possible for a wider public acceptance of people’s sexual orientation or gender expression, I am, post-Trump and post-initial pandemic, not optimistic.

Because even without all of those other massive shifts we as a society have endured in parallel if not actually together, people are kind of awful to one another. We’re judgmental out of our own insecurities and few things cause more insecurity than parenting.

We are constantly questioning whether we’re making the right decisions, and we’re second-guessing ourselves, and we’re back to the freaking drawing board when we have other kids because what worked with one doesn’t work on the next one and we’re all worried we’re raising assholes who won’t contribute to society but we won’t know until they’re adults and don’t even get me started if you have a child who requires more than that. And I don’t even know what that’s like, but I’m guessing it’s a hell of a lot harder than what I went through.

The point is that we question. We judge. And because we’ve done so in the past, it’s likely we will do it again in the future.

So, when Danielle Smith said on her radio show Saturday that “it’s the child who has to be of mind to make these decisions,” she suggested that it’s not currently the child who is making these decisions — she suggested it’s the parents.

And it’s easy to forego parental rights if you think they’re not parenting “right”. We already do this to “bad” parents, and “unfit” parents, and we do it to parents who think they’re doing the right thing for their kids because we, or society, or doctors, or therapists think it’s wrong.

It’s brilliant politics to take the focus off of children. It’s brilliant politics to pit parents against one another because most parents are already there on some level. It’s brilliant politics but it’s fucking awful leadership.