Recently, both City of North Vancouver and the North Vancouver School District announced they will fly the rainbow flag during Gay Pride Week as a symbol of support.
Those are welcome gestures of inclusion.
It’s unlikely politicians had any idea their vote would coincide with a media explosion that this week greeted the public coming out of Caitlyn Jenner — the transgendered woman formerly known as Bruce Jenner, the 1970s Olympic gold medal track star.
Jenner’s transformation has been intensely public and as such has brought with it a public discussion of some very real — and usually very private — issues.
The world is a very different place for the queer community than it was even 10 years ago. Discussion of gender, however, is one of the last social taboos. There are those among us who still struggle to understand different ways of defining what it means to be a man or a woman — or someone who moves between those.
But struggle we must.
It wasn’t so long ago that same-sex marriage was a radical concept.
It also wasn’t long ago that a former student took the school district to court after suffering years of homophobic harassment. It was less than five years ago that the school board apologized to another former student for allowing a homophobic slur to be printed next to his photo in a decades-old yearbook.
It’s important as a society that we continue to move forward together, examining and rejecting our prejudices.
The school board’s small symbolic gesture is an important part of that.
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