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It is well documented that LGBTQ adolescents have a higher rate of suicide than their peers. According to the Trevor Project, a U.S. organization that provides crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth, suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth from 10 to 24, but lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are four times as likely to commit suicide. Young people still in the midst of questioning their sexuality are three times as likely as straight young people to kill themselves.

Schools, boards and legislators should be working together to do everything they can to lower those rates and provide support for those teens. Gay-straight alliances bring youth together and work to stop homophobia. They’re clearly all to the good, and no school board should stand in their way. No legislation should carry stipulations that could derail them, either. Prentice said that Bill 10 allows the Tories to do what the Liberals’ bill didn’t, which is to support the alliances, and also support the rights of parents and school boards. That’s puzzling, because a gay-straight alliance infringes on no one’s rights, and certainly not on those of parents and boards. Nobody has to join the alliances if they don’t want to, any more than they have to join the drama club if they’re not interested in it.

It’s too bad the Tories have turned this issue into such an unnecessary muddle. It’s ironic that their bill is called the Act to Amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to Protect our Children. It does nothing to protect LGBTQ children; it throws stumbling blocks in their way with its provision for judicial review. For students at a higher risk of suicide because of a struggle with their sexual orientation, being told they have to go to court for a ruling just to have a supportive environment established in their schools, could be perceived as one more societal rejection. Blakeman’s bill, the Safe and Inclusive Schools Statutes Amendment Act, got it right. Students don’t need, in Prentice’s words “clear legal recourse,” to start gay-straight alliances. They need the freedom to do so.