Long-serving NPA school board trustee Ken Denike and rookie colleague Sophia Woo are facing accusations of misrepresenting a Vancouver School Board policy and pandering to anti-gay sentiment because of comments they made while campaigning at a church picnic this past summer.
The clip was discovered only days after interview footage of the two was uploaded to the website of the American anti-gay marriage group National Organization for Marriage (NOM) criticizing the district's Out In Schools program, which is intended to help students dealing with homophobia and bullying. In the NOM video shot on school board property, the two trustees express disapproval of an educational booklet put out in 2006 that contained a link to a gay men's health website that features graphic sex scenes they felt were inappropriate for students. The booklet was recently reprinted with the link removed.
The YouTube video posted Aug. 20 is no longer available to the public and the account holder who posted it, Timothy Fan, has threatened the newspaper Xtra with legal action after it reposted it on its website. The video portrays a 10-minute question and answer session in a public park with the Christian Social Concern Fellowship. At the event, which is primarily in Cantonese, Denike appears to suggest the school board has a general antidiscrimination policy rather than the specific anti-homophobia policy it has had on the books since 2004.
Denike tells the small gathering that a vote for Vision Vancouver would mean "voting for the basically mandatory involvement in the curriculum for gay, lesbian, etc., which is not the way we've done things in Vancouver. In the past, what we've done is say you cannot discriminate but not to try to protect one particular group. The object is not to discriminate against anybody rather than say this particular group needs to be special."
Vision Vancouver board chair Patti Bacchus called his comments misleading. "I was really surprised to see him out there saying these things and implying to people that if you don't vote for the NPA, you will have your children taught things that are inappropriate," she said. "It is fanning homophobic fears, in my opinion, in order to pander and get votes instead of being truthful about what is currently happening in the VSB."
Denike, who said he has a shaky grasp of Cantonese and so translation was provided by Woo, said his remarks are being blown out of proportion for political reasons and were simply made off-the-cuff.
"I may have oversimplified stuff or whatever," said Denike. "We were just trying to have a conversation. It wasn't a production video thing, it wasn't done on-script or prepared. If I made a shambles of it, I apologize. It wasn't meant for public consumption and it was a private event."
Gay youth activist Ryan Clayton said Denike's comments go against his voting record. "I know trustee Denike has voted in favour of explicit protections for gays and lesbians in the past, so certainly his voting history goes against the things he said at that picnic. Even after this video was taken, he voted in favour of supporting a provincial antihomophobia policy, so I would say he is clearly lying to that group," said Clayton. Denike and Woo told the Courier they support gay marriage and that they gave the interview that appeared on NOM's website under the impression it was for a documentary on an American news channel.
"There was no mention of the anti-gay marriage website," said Woo. "[The interviewer] didn't say a single word about it."
Twitter: @flematic
