A celebration of the LGBTQIA2S+ community

ADVANCE PHOTO BY IAN CROFT

By Ian Croft
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
news@tabertimes.com

With June being Pride Month, Taber had its yearly series of weekly events celebrating and raising awareness of the LGBTQIA2S+ community. The first event of the week was LGBTQ&A held at the Taber Public Library on May 31. This event was to help educate parents on what they can do to help support their child in the event they come out as non-heterosexual or non-binary. Jamie Lewis, the presenter of this event, took a moment to speak about why this type of event is important.

“I am offering a talk/discussion event this evening where we are going to be discussing how we can better support 2SLGBTQ+ youths,” said Lewis. “Looking into topics like how can adults build safe spaces for youths, how can they respond if youths disclose different information about their sexuality and gender, information for you if they have questions about how they can better navigate, and how they can communicate with adults in a way to help everybody feel heard in the situation. It’s just an opportunity to kind of open up this discussion a bit. I know there’s a lot of maybe hesitancy around these topics and fear of getting it wrong. My hope in giving this kind of talk is to encourage people to just give it a shot and that there are always ways to figure out how to be there for each other.”

Lewis also discussed the importance of Pride Month.

“Pride gives us the opportunity to boost understanding and awareness about what it is to be a 2SLGBTQ+ person living in southern Alberta,” said Lewis. “To better understand the experiences the people are having, how we can support them differently and it also allows a sense of community to be formed whether that is between people with themselves are part of the community or allies. It kind of helps people know that they are not alone and better connect with one another.”

Andrew Prokop, mayor of Taber, was also in attendance at the event and when was asked for comment and he stated he hopes the week has tons of success across multiple events.

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