Dalhousie University is facing criticism from the LGBTQ community after renting out space on campus for an event featuring Laura-Lynn Thompson, a former People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidate.
Thompson has made several anti-LGBTQ statements in the past. During a debate in Red Deer, Alta., during the federal election, Thompson campaigned to cut funding to LGBTQ programs, attacked the idea of gender fluidity, calling it “the greatest and most insidious assault against our children,” and has criticized LGBTQ representation as “unfair.”
The event, The Advance Summit, happened on Nov. 23 and was held held in the Dalhousie Collaborative Health Education Building and featured Thompson as a speaker.
Online, the event is being described as a “leadership development and empowerment boot camp.”
While her views may not be directly violent towards the LGBTQ community, they are violent in its concept, said Truelee Love, the president of DalOut, the LGBTQ society at Dalhousie.
Love explained it’s not fair that the university will offer someone like Thompson a platform, but not extend the same opportunities to those on “the other side.”
“Dalhousie does some things for the LGBTQ community, however we don’t see that sort of representation with speakers,” said Love.
She said she understands it’s a difficult situation from the university’s perspective and that they do not wish to partake in the policing of speakers on campus.
In an email statement to Global News, Dalhousie said it is not affiliated with the event and that they are simply renting the space out to the event.
It added all events organized within the Dalhousie community reflect the school’s values: respect, inclusion and diversity.
“Dalhousie didn’t have to accept the event, the other thing is they get to review these things … they didn’t necessarily have to be like ‘we don’t agree with you, therefore you’re not allowed any platform in our city’ they could have just denied the booking,” said Love.
A petition was started on Change.org by Ben Dornan to uninvite Thompson from the event which gathered almost 1,700 signatures.
“[The fact that] someone who has built her success and her career off of hate speech and … limiting rights to our community is being granted a legitimate platform through this conference at Dalhousie is more so the concerning part,” said Love.
It is one thing to have these opinions and say them online and a completely different thing to have built your entire career off of this, she said.
“There’s so many incredible activists and community members here at Dalhousie and in our community that honestly don’t receive a lot of media attention for what they do and I hope that we can get to a point where the media pays as much attention to the good work that is being done,” said Love.
Feature image provided.
