The Saskatchewan Party Is Killing Saskatchewan People
It's that simple, you guys. It's a fact. And I'm so tired of dancing around it.
No tourist worth their passport leaves Central America without visiting a Mayan archeological site (more commonly known as “ruins”, but I’ve learned Mayans understandably don’t love that term.)
I’ve been enjoying touring them with my 11-year-old, who never fails to marvel over the altars.
Mayan sites offer a glimpse into the rich history and culture of the Mayan civilization, which flourished circa 1000 BC to 800 AD. Exploring these sites provides a tangible connection to Mayan architecture, art, and daily life: all of which undisputedly revolved around human sacrifice.
Which got me thinking about the Sask Party.
In his one-on-one interviews last week, in response to questions about public school students who are not prepared to speak to their parents about their identity, Duncan repeatedly referenced not being able to grasp reality when he was a youth.
“…when I was a child, the things I thought were real were maybe my perception...” - Dustin Duncan, CBC Saskatchewan, August 23, 2023
As weird and alarming as that is, what he’s implying is far more troubling.
“You and I - we were all once 13 years old. The perception and reality are sometimes isn’t always the same, especially when we’re dealing with children that don’t have the same life experience as adults, their brains are still forming, they’re dealing with impulse control, in some cases already going through puberty.” - CBC Saskatchewan, August 23, 2023
In these instances the context was that a student may not truly grasp what their parent’s response to news on their identity might be.
The implied context, at least in my opinion, is that if that they can’t grasp how their parents might react to the news of such, how can a student be capable of comprehending and actually changing their gender?
The Sask Party is not just denying trans kid’s rights… in my opinion the Sask Party is denying trans kids exist at all.
Yes yes, I hear the howling, “This is about parents’ rights! Parental choice!”
Has anyone asked either of our Education Ministers or our effervescent premier,
“The parents’ right to do what?”
“Parental choice to do what, exactly?”
The Sask Party’s scripted answer, dutifully regurgitated by cabinet ministers and Scooter alike, is some variation of "the parents’ right to know and be involved in their child's education."
That’s gaslit bullshit and not one reporter or anyone else should accept it at face value. It’s not an answer. It doesn’t even acknowledge the question.
Every parent in Saskatchewan already has the right to know and be involved in their child's education.
Unequivocally.
In no world, including Saskatchewan’s, are our province’s overworked and underpaid teachers refusing to communicate with students’ parents.
If you are a Saskatchewan parent, you know full well you have unfettered access to terrorize your child’s teacher, principal… probably even the vice-principal.
No - the Sask Party’s new policy specifically applies to a child who does not want to share their chosen identity with their parents - a scenario we've glossed over with the labels "safe" or "unsafe".
Those words are meaningless and lazy.
The reality is the Sask Party’s new policy specifically applies to a child who believes their parents will deny them their identity, or who believes that there will be destructive, potentially life-threatening consequences to their coming out.
The potential consequences for this child have been soundly and scientifically researched. A child who is denied their identity and/or rejected by their parents over their admission will overwhelmingly experience pain, death or both.
In all instances - child, teenager or adult - the Canadian Pediatric Society associates the condition of a human being who is living their biologically-assigned gender, not their “experienced/expressed” gender, with “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”
It is reasonable to conclude that a Saskatchewan student who feels they cannot share their “experienced/expressed” self with their parents is already in “clinically significant distress”.
Does the Sask Party government reject the Canadian Paediatric Society as experts on our kid’s health and wellbeing?
The short answer is yes. Yes it does.
Good thing we just built a Children’s Hospital cause we’re gonna need it.
I mean, if my kid is in medical distress, mentally or physically, I’m taking him to the doctor, not Dustin Duncan’s church. Jesus.
(Yeah, we’re going to get to him in a minute.)
But Sask Party talking points say differently - they think a child is simply conjuring up gender dysphoria in their undeveloped little minds.
Scott Moe and his band of merry morons believe there's no such thing as the well-documented, scientifically-proven harmful consequences of gender dysphoria. You can be certain they believe that gender-affirming care for a child or adolescent shouldn’t even exist.
What Scott Moe and the Sask Party actually believe is that a child will approach their totally rational, fundamentalist parents, who will then calmly gather the nuclear, hetero family at the kitchen table to pray their child’s trans away. Then a few years later a contrite, excessively grateful young man will come back to his parents, tearfully thanking them for saving him from a life of godless misery, genital mutilation and sodomy.
That is the only scenario that exists in Moe’s world.
How do I know this?
Because if he says that’s not the only plausible outcome of his policy, the Sask Party is admitting they just deliberately paved the way for the other outcomes, including the one which ends with a dead kid.
What kind of human being willingly, deliberately sacrifices the lives of other human beings?
Because according to actual doctors from:
the Department of Psychiatry, NIMS University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
the Department of Public Health, New York University, New York, New York
Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Amritsar, India
the Department of Psychiatry, St Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, MKD, North Macedonia
the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina
“There exists a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities in those with gender dysphoria and hospitalized for suicidal behavior. Our findings call for prompt evaluations of comorbidities of suicidal behaviors among adolescents and youth with gender dysphoria to provide a coordinated approach to suicide prevention, thereby reducing the future risk of poor health outcomes and mortality.” - Faruki F, Patel A, Jaka S, et al. Gender dysphoria in pediatric and transitional-aged youth hospitalized for suicidal behaviors: a cross-national inpatient study. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2023.
I mean… who needs doctors from Duke University when we can leave our kids lives in the hands of Scott Moe and the ag degree he got before bankrupting his own farm?
According to the study, the psychiatric comorbidities existing in gender dysmorphic children and adolescents who were already in the hospital for suicidal behaviours include:
somatic disorders,
eating disorders,
OCD,
anxiety disorders,
and neurodevelopmental disorders.
If your child is facing a life-threatening health crisis, are you taking them to an actual doctor?
Or are you heading over to see what Scott Moe’s pastor thinks?
Cause that’s the difference between real life and what Scott Moe and his Sask Party clowns “believe”. That’s how relevant a bunch of mediocre middle-aged hypocrites’ “beliefs” are to whether a trans kid lives or dies.
But sure, let’s follow through with the Sask Party’s logic that the Saskatchewan student, who just shared with their teacher their fear of coming out at home, just doesn’t perceive things correctly.
Let’s say that lo and behold, the student’s parents turn out to be fully-supportive! The forced interjection of the state into deeply personal matters of the home and family saved the day!
The only appropriate response to that is "Are you fucking serious?"
That notion is so insane and illogical that it should not ever be accepted. Not by reporters, not by anyone who hears it.
Yet here we are.
Because even if that’s true, in order to avoid the assertion that they are willingly sacrificing the lives of gender dysmorphic kids, the Sask Party still has to admit that there's only TWO possible outcomes in their dystopian fantasies: kitchen table pray-away, or a hilarious mix-up because kids are stupid.
These are the questions that need to be asked of the Sask Party and/or anyone who is out there seeking attention by running their mouths on “parental rights”.
Parental right to do what?
Does the Sask Party deny the possibility their new policy of forced confrontation with the student’s parents could lead to significant negative consequences for the student, including death?
What would Jesus do?
The answers to Question 1 are pretty straightforward. The Sask Party is preserving the parents’ right to:
force their kid into conversion therapy,
abuse or abandon their kid for coming out,
deny their kid’ identity, leading to all kinds of psychiatric comorbidities,
find their kid hanging in a closet.
While they’re never going to admit it, the answer to Question 2 is yes.
Yes, the Sask Party is willing to sacrifice human lives - in this case, of children and adolescents - on the altar of their personal beliefs. We know that for sure because they’ve already shown us it’s true.
Which brings us to Question 3.
Based on what we know of him from the Bible (which is all we know of him whether you believe in the Bible or not) would Jesus have encouraged his disciples to troll angry family, friends and neighbours, mocking them just to make them feel worse about something they’re already upset about?
Really?
Did Jesus advise those he met to avoid doctors, or deny the existence of skilled and experienced experts?
Is that what Jesus would tell us to do?
No, and I think we can all agree Jesus would not have advised his apostles to impose broad and sweeping mandates that would kill even one child.
Not one.
So whose god is Scooter worshiping? What altar is he praying at?
We already know the answer. He’s power-crazed. His entire government caucus is morally and ethically bankrupt.
Yes, ideally every parent has a sound grasp on what their child is going through in every aspect of their lives.
Ideally, no teacher has to protect a kid from significant potential harm from their parents.
But we also know damn well that in 2023, the world is far from ideal.
Which brings me back to those Mayan civilizations. Touring an ancient archeological site typically brings you face to face with a sacrificial stone or altar and it is chilling AF.
Because it’s real.
It’s right there.
Observing a sacrificial site means standing in a spot where powerful leaders and governments once used all kinds of creative ways to kill people because of “beliefs”.
In real life.
It happened.
There are many different ancient cultures with examples of those in power willingly taking other people’s lives for the sake of some kind of greater good.
Hell, there’s examples of that in the 20th century.
Yet we seem to think we’re somehow different and special in Saskatchewan.
We’re not.
The only difference between the Sask Party government and ancient Central American power structures is the latter had the decency to sacrifice the life of a fellow human being to their gods in broad daylight, in front of everyone, while telling everybody why.
If you don’t agree with that, what’s your theory?
When the Sask Party knows a policy can lead to the death of a Saskatchewan youth but implements it anyway, what else are they doing other than willingly sacrificing that kid’s life?
Whether they stab you in the heart or force you into a situation that kills you - dead at the hands of power is still dead.
I am so tired of pretending that this is torqued rhetoric, so we’d better not say it out loud, lest we be labelled extreme or unhinged by the likes of some geriatric asshole holed up in an AM (AM!) radio station or office in the bowels of the Legislature.
You just watched Saskatchewan lead the western world in rejecting medical science, resulting in skyrocketing and otherwise preventable deaths. You learned today that life expectancy is plummeting in Saskatchewan. There has been an ongoing suicide epidemic in Saskatchewan for years and it’s only getting worse. Overdoses are taking multiple Saskatchewan lives every day.
So many dead friends and family who don’t have to be - who could still be here if someone in charge in the Sask Party government had bothered to give a single shit if any of them lived.
FFS - how many people have to die in Saskatchewan because they couldn’t access government-provided services that have been deliberately cut off and/or backwoods, terrible policy - before we all agree that the Sask Party government is willfully sacrificing the lives of real Saskatchewan people?
Do you need to lose someone you love? Do you need to be hit with the realization that your loved one is dead, but didn’t need to be?
What needs to happen for all of us to comprehend that people are losing their lives so the Sask Party can stay in office?
After everything… all the years I’ve covered some of the stupidest bullshit from this government - never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d write that sentence.
It isn’t easy to speak out right now in Saskatchewan. Trust me, I get it. But while it might not be popular with your sister-in-law, co-workers or neighbours at the lake, you have to take a stand, because it really is coming down to a matter of choosing to help other Saskatchewanians live… or stand back and let them keep dying. All of us need to get serious about putting in the effort required to stand up for what’s right and turn this nightmare around.
We got ourselves here - we’ve got to get ourselves out of it.
But I know we can.
Enjoy your long weekend.
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