Toronto District School Board opens its first co-ed washroom
An “alternative” school dedicated to “equity” issues has opened the Toronto District School Board’s first co-ed washroom.
Intended primarily for students identifying as “transgender,” the washroom was set up after a petition by grade 8 students that cited last year’s passage of Bill 33, which enshrined protections based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” in Ontario.
The school board unveiled the washroom at City View Alternative Senior School on Friday in a sign-hanging ceremony, according to the Toronto Star.
City View caters to Grade 7 and 8 students and is dedicated to “peace and social justice,” teaching the curriculum “through the lens of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.” Its website says there are 64 students and four teachers.
Ryan Bird, a spokesman for the Toronto District School Board, told LifeSiteNews that the washroom has two stalls, meaning that it would be a shared space for boys and girls.
Cheri Di Novo, who proposed the “gender identity” bill and was present at the school for the ceremony, told the Toronto Star that this is just the beginning of the fall-out from her legislation.
“There will start to be demands for this in the workplace,” she said. “Transgender people are a small minority in the grand scheme of things. But they were a silenced minority until the passage of Toby’s Act. This will give them a voice.”
Some critics are shaking their heads, however, at the notion of putting teenage boys and girls in the same bathroom.
“It’s just being so politically correct that they’ve lost all common sense,” said Gwen Landolt, national vice-president of the pro-family group REAL Women. “What you don’t need is adolescents sharing common bathrooms.”
A co-ed bathroom is offensive to the unique dignity of man and woman, she argued. “It’s just void of common sense. All of this is trying to be on the frontlines of progress, but it really is on the front lines of knee-jerk adjustments to try to appear to be progressive and is actually regressive.”
The Toronto District School Board is the largest school board in Canada and the fourth-largest in North America.
