Transphobic stickers mar campaign signs

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This article was published 16/09/2021 (1374 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Content warning: The following article contains language that is derogatory towards the LGBTQ community.

Further vandalism of election signs has one Provencher candidate calling for unity among MP hopefuls after his campaign signs were marked with hate speech last week.

Nearly a dozen of Liberal candidate Trevor Kirczenow’s election signs were marked with stickers reading “Broken Tranny” on Friday morning. Fellow candidates and LGBTQ allies condemned the stickers.

Kirczenow said he received reports premade stickers were slapped on a handful of his campaign signs around Steinbach and La Broquerie in the early hours of Friday morning. Kirczenow is an openly transgender man and, in 2019, became the first transgender candidate to be nominated by a major Canadian political party for a federal election.

“It’s clear that somebody planned this, somebody got these stickers printed,” Kirczenow said. “It wasn’t just somebody who walked by with a pen and scrawled something on a sign…that’s really disappointing.”

The Liberal candidate said with increasingly transphobic commentary coming out of some political campaigns he worries anti-LGBTQ attacks will escalate.

“People take that kind of fearmongering language and rhetoric as license to do more.”

Kirczenow took aim at incumbent Ted Falk for his vote against Bill C-6, a piece of legislation which would ban conversion therapy, saying he would appreciate if the Conservative candidate would stand in solidarity with the queer community, rather than against it.

In response to the sign vandalism, Falk said while political disagreement is the norm during elections, there’s no place for “demeaning attacks.”

“To resort to vandalism is cowardly and unworthy of our democracy. Whether one agrees or disagrees with a candidate’s positions, everyone deserves to be treated with respect,” an emailed statement from Falk read.

People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier expressed his dislike for political correctness regarding the LGBTQ community during his Steinbach rally on Sept. 6 in A.D. Penner Park. The federal leader mocked those who defend the right to change one’s gender identity.

Independent candidate Rick Loewen said the act did not surprise him in the slightest, calling the vandalism “absolutely deplorable.”

“There’s a fear among a small segment of people that if things aren’t like them it isn’t right,” Loewen said. “It’s a reflection of some of the right-er wing parties in this riding.”

He added the act may have the opposite of what was intended, with more support garnered for Kirczenow and the queer community instead of ostracizing them.

As of press time requests for comment from Green Party candidate Janine Gibson and PPC candidate Noel Gautron went unanswered.

A counsellor who serves teens in the LGBTQ community said he’s more often discouraged than encouraged when it comes to issues within the queer community in the southeast.

Greg Costen, owner of Manitoba Video Counselling, said in his experience acts of homophobia and transphobia are not new in the area. Costen’s business counsels teens aged 16 and up through a contract with the Rainbow Resource Centre in Winnipeg.

“This is the social issue the [religious community] have chosen to hate the most,” he said. “They take that hate and do inappropriate things with it.”

Many of the clients Costen counsels come from religious backgrounds where they have either been run out of their religious circle due to their gender identity or sexuality. He said in some cases clients are run out of town completely.

While a shift in mindset is underway in other subsets of the population, Costen said traditionally conservative communities are not quite there, and incidents such as this will further keep queer folks in the closet.

“These people are so scared to come out because they’re going to be next. They’re gonna be the next ones with the sticker on the door or the spray paint or the name calling or whatever it might be…there is a detrimental effect to the queer community when this kind of stuff goes on.”

In a Facebook post from Sunday evening Kirczenow wrote he had a ten-minute phone call with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau regarding the incident and the effect it will have on the LGBTQ community. The post stated Kirczenow asked Trudeau what the party could do about incidents like this, to which the Liberal leader responded, “We have to stay strong and we have to win.”

– with files from Greg Vandermeulen