Tuesday’s letters: Fund libraries instead of grandstanding

In Friday’s Journal, Jamie Sarkonak supports the Education minister’s fulminations concerning four graphic novels with LGBTQ2S+ characters and some sexually explicit scenes. The books are not entirely about sex, Sarkonak acknowledges, “but that’s not the point. The problem is that some pages contain graphic sexual content.”

Friday’s Journal also provides equally explicit sexual details of engagements between junior hockey players and a young woman whose consent to such encounters is unclear. Friday’s newspaper is not entirely about sex either, but certainly “some pages contain graphic sexual content” — content involving professional hockey players, who, collectively, are admired by many Canadian children.

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As this example demonstrates, today’s youth readily encounter graphic sexual content in multiple venues, including, it seems, their respectable local newspaper. Young people must try to make sense of such a world. For some readers, these graphic novels (read in their entirety, not sensationally excerpted) offer a humane and nuanced exploration of aspects of life that adults can struggle to discuss.

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Properly funded, professionally staffed school libraries also support young readers attempting to understand their own confusing environment. The minister should be making necessary improvements in this arena, rather than indulging in exploitative grandstanding.

Margaret Mackey, Edmonton

Smith values her job more than unity

I find Premier Smith’s handling of the Alberta separation question deeply disappointing. Actions speak louder than words, and so far her actions suggest that she values her premiership more than keeping Canada whole.

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Her decision to lower the threshold required for an independence referendum is designed to appease those members of the UCP who favour separation. She fears that if she does not placate that faction, they will either remove her from party leadership or join the separatist Republican Party of Alberta, thereby splitting the conservative vote and handing the next provincial election to the NDP.

Her approach is naive at best. Just ask former U.K. prime minister David Cameron, whose miscalculated decision to hold a referendum on EU membership led to Brexit — and his resignation.

Rather than kowtow to an insurgent minority, Ms. Smith must find the courage to face that internal pressure and govern on behalf of the majority of Albertans who want nothing to do with independence from Canada.

Muriel Stollery, Edmonton

Letters welcome

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