Jared Wesley is a political scientist with the University of Alberta who leads a project called Common Ground. One aspect of the group’s work is to delve into the similarities and differences between progressives and conservatives in Alberta and the rest of western Canada.
The ATA News spoke to Wesley about the LaGrange meme and the broader socio-political climate in Alberta.
Is there common ground between Albertans who are pro-Pride and those who are afraid of or uncomfortable with that aspect of society?
Jared Wesley, University of AlbertaWe’ve come a very long way in a pretty short period of time, in the span of about a generation. We’ve got to the point now where most people who do not approve of the LGBTQ2+ lifestyle, many of those folks also deny the reality that is biology and extensive scientific research that you are actually born into these communities, you don’t choose or opt into it. Those folks are now in a position in a lot of communities of at least saying “live and let live.”
What’s worrisome here in Alberta in certain communities and in other communities throughout Canada, the United States and elsewhere is that it’s becoming more and more acceptable to voice views like the ones that we saw in the LaGrange meme. Some of that comes from victories by conservative parties that have not so subtly cozied up to socially conservative groups. Folks think that victories by parties that afforded that vote means that now it’s acceptable to express bigoted views like the ones we saw in that meme.
So it’s incumbent on not just members of these marginalized and victimized groups to speak up but also mainstream Albertans, those that support the LGBTQ2+ community. They’re the ones that need to speak up.
What are your suggestions for how people and groups who are on opposite sides of this can navigate their way going forward?
One thing would be to avoid writing off entire segments of society because you assume that they share the views of somebody who’s extreme. There actually are people that are sympathetic to your side that you may not think about at first. There are a lot of people that are actually open to persuasion.
What happens if we do write off entire segments of the population as being, as Hillary Clinton put it, deplorable or incurable or unpersuadable? What happens if we say that? The result is that we don’t attempt dialogue whatsoever and the only option we have is to marginalize those people, to try to remove them from the democratic discourse entirely, which is really what got us into a lot of these messes in the first place.
A lot of folks that are now speaking out and taking hateful and, in some extreme cases, violent approaches to resolving these issues didn’t get there overnight. They got there because they felt marginalized and not heard. It’s a bit too late to persuade a lot of these folks but that’s a very, very small part of our society. A lot of people are persuadable on these issues and I think we need to do a better job of separating the extremists from the folks that just need a little bit more information, a little more common understanding, to get them to where they have a more inclusive view of what it means to be part of our community. ❚
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
