Counter-protestor in Surrey reportedly hit with rock during anti-SOGI 123 rally

While demonstrators defending Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity education (SOGI 123) outnumbered those against in Vancouver Wednesday, the same could not be said in Surrey, leading to at least one counter-protestor getting hit with a rock.

Around 600 people gathered outside the building of the Surrey Teachers’ Association on King George Boulevard protesting SOGI 123, outnumbering those in support of the educational resources.

Lizanne Foster, the vice president of the Surrey Teachers Association, tells CityNews staff at the building helped tend to a protestor supporting transgender rights who she says had been hit in the head with a rock.

“She was feeling dizzy and weak so we’re just trying to take care of her,” she told CityNews.

She says police on the scene were notified, but no action was taken.

In an email to CityNews, the Surrey RCMP says it got reports of an assault in the area of the protest, saying an investigation is in the “early stages.” Police did not confirm whether the assault was from an item being thrown at someone.

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Foster says demonstrators began gathering around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, equipped with hateful signs directed at the 2SLGBTQIA+ and transgender communities.

“It was quite overwhelming. The vitriol and the hate and the absolute misinformation and lies. A lot of people in the crowd had the kinds of flags that we had in the trucker’s protest,” she said in reference to nationwide “Freedom Convoy” protests in 2022.

“We think that this issue has just galvanized the same group of people who were involved in those protests.”

She says for at least one school in the Surrey district, about 50 per cent of kids did not show up on Wednesday.

“People are bringing their little kids to yell hate at us right here outside our building. They had loudspeakers, they were totally well prepared to spew hate the whole day,” she said.

Foster says she stood outside chanting “transphobes have got to go” and similar messages for a time on Wednesday. However, she says more needs to be done to curb what she calls the misinformation around the issue.

Misinformation about SOGI 123 needs to be addressed, Foster says

Foster says many of the protestors against SOGI 123 are misinformed about what the educational resources entail, saying the full scope of it is only available to teachers, not the public.

“That information has to be disseminated. You have to actually show people what is happening because in the absence of actual fact, people are open to these lies that are being told to them,” she said.

She adds the misinformation proliferates beyond a misunderstanding of the educational resource.

“There’s a significant amount of ignorance about what sex and sexuality actually is. People use ‘sexualizing’ they use ‘sex’ and all these things — flowers are actually sexual beings. They’re male and female,” she explained.

“If you don’t want any kind of sexual curriculum at all, that means kids don’t get to learn about flowers, about plants, about a whole bunch of different things.”

The B.C. government has published a “mythbuster” fact page on SOGI 123 in an effort to address some of the misinterpretations of the resource.

Protests against sexual orientation and gender identity education were planned nationwide Wednesday, with equal numbers of counter-protests also planned.