Activists gather in droves in support of Pride events in N.L. schools

Serena Paine has been here before. She's held the signs, chanted the slogans, marched the streets.

Back then, it was the AIDS crisis. Then came the fight for equal marriage.

Now?

Paine was among hundreds of people who rallied Friday in support of LGBTQ inclusion in Newfoundland and Labrador schools, a direct response to a planned protest that urged parents to complain about Pride-themed classroom events and participate in a "day of action" against LGBTQ material in the school system.

That anti-LGBTQ protest didn't materialize Friday, with no evidence of its organizers being present. Instead, LGBTQ advocates and allies filled the steps and sidewalk outside the province's House of Assembly.

But the overwhelming turnout, which included community leaders, politicians and Premier Andrew Furey, is only a small victory for Paine: she'd rather not have to show up at all.

"Once again we're facing hate," Paine said, wrapped in a rainbow flag. "We thought this was a battle that we won 30 years ago."

Back then, activists always said education was the key to ending discrimination, she said. 

"But education is not necessarily the key anymore. It is speaking up, it is fighting back again. These people — I know they're smaller in numbers than we are, but they're loud. And sometimes you just gotta speak over them."

Friday's rally mirrors similar tensions across the continent. From California to New Brunswick, a rise in anti-LGBTQ sentiment has sparked rallies like this one.

Cheyenne Edmunds-Cull, an 18-year-old student at St. Kevin's High School, said they've been bullied for being non-binary.

Things have improved these days, Edmunds-Cull says, with Pride days and pronoun days to normalize sexual and gender diversity. To take that away, they say, is to endanger LGBTQ kids.

"This is something that's really important to me. I grew up in a pretty rural community. This kind of stuff wasn't talked about a lot," Edmunds-Cull said.

"And the way things are going now, I feel like people are getting more comfortable with being transphobic, homophobic. And we need to condemn it as soon as possible."