Posts Tagged ‘editorial’
On May 12th, British Columbian voters will be asked the following question when we vote:
Which electoral system should British Columbia use to elect members to the Provincial Legislative Assembly?
- The existing electoral system (First-past-the-post)
- The single transferable vote system (BC-STV) proposed by the BC Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform
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In Brief:
- BC-STV elects multiple MLAs per riding using a single, fractionally transferred vote from a preferential ballot
- You rank a number of candidates in your electoral area. Votes distributed according to overall rank. Top-ranked elected.
- Voting yes to STV on May 12th will radically improve how fair our provincial voting system is.
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Photocredit: BBaltimore
I think that anyone who believes in diversity, democracy and fairness will want to vote Yes for STV on May 12th.
Diversity and Fairness:
The current system (First past the post) only delivers fair results if everyone lives in a riding where they have the same political opinions as all their neighbours. In a diverse society, we’re going to be living up next to people who are different beliefs from us. STV makes sure that we don’t lose our political representation when we do that.
The data on countries that have STV is that the popular vote (how many votes for each party in all the ridings) matches closely the number of people from each party who get elected. This is the definition of a fair system in my book.
In countries with STV, more women get elected than in countries with our system, and more lesbians and other minorities get elected. Both are good for lesbians.
For example, if little politically progressive me moved back to my home town of Prince George, currently I could kiss goodbye ever being represented by a politician that didn’t make me ill. There would be nobody to represent me. If STV gets passed, most of the elected folks in my district would be conservative, but there would be at least one I could support that got elected.
If I stay in my progressive East Vancouver riding, currently I have to split my conscience between a Green Party candidate who supports my hard core environmental values, and an NDP candidate, who also supports things I believe in but who has a prayer of being elected.
Under STV my voting could be more nuanced. I could have the luxury of voting for a Green Party candidate that supports my environmental values, as well as an NDP candidate.
Similarly, a conservative right-wing person living in my current riding would have some representation if STV is adopted that they wouldn’t have otherwise. We both get what’s fair. With STV every one still gets one vote. The ridings are larger, more like federal ridings, and there are more MLA’s elected in each riding. When you vote, instead of voting for just one person, you are allowed to indicate who your second, third and fourth choices are.
There’s a great little video online that does a good job of showing how the votes get counted. 
How my vote counts more with STV: When my favourite candidate has enough votes to get elected, the surplus votes gets assigned to our second choice. This means that I can vote for a Green candidate and an NDP candidate, knowing that my vote will go to where it does the most good, or even to support two candidates from the same party I like. I don’t ever again have to vote strategically to prevent a bad candidate from getting in. We can all vote our conscience.
How my political opposite’s vote counts more with STV: Although the majority of MLA’s representing their riding will be not to their taste, the conservative family down the street will be part of electing a small number of candidates whose values they agree with. When they need help from a MLA, they now have one with whom they feel comfortable.
So I hope you will vote to make this historic change to the way we elect people to represent us, and help spread the word about BC-STV.
John Cleese on Proportional Representation in England (STV is a type of PR. All of Western Europe uses some form of proportional representation except England)
Vancouver plays this wonderful trick on Vancouverites every February. For a short while, it seems like spring is fully sprung and summer is a whisper away. The snow drops and crocuses pop up from the ground, and buds on trees start to swell. Alas, the only consistent Vancouver weather pattern I’ve been able to discern is this: As soon as the cherry blossoms have finished fallling into nice big petal drifts on the streets, so big you want to pile them up and leap into them, we’re in for at several weeks of non-stop torrential rains.
Now, I’m originally from northern BC, so I apologize for the Vancouver-centrism of talking about cherry blossoms so early in the year, not to mention the fact that they don’t have much to do with lesbians. Gloating about the warm weather down here is mean, I know, so go ahead get even and gloat about your cheap housing.
This edition of LQ is our 17th, and since the first edition of Lesbian Quarterly came out March 8th, 2004, it is LQ’s 4th birthday. The early editions were printed, which got to be too much work for one lone gal, so we went online only about a year ago. The print format archives are available here as pdf documents and still have a lot of good information and profiles in them.
A few days ago I recieved a poetry submission from Cherilyn Fry called “Lately Musings” . I love it when lesbians send me stories and story ideas. Keep them coming! And while you’re at it, how about a flurry of lesbian haikus? If the cherry blossom festival can do it, why can’t we?
I’ve begun posting articles as I come across them, so this edition is a little slim, but I encourage you to check out the following recent posts from the last few days:
L-Word Newsfeed for the L-Word fans out there (I personally stopped watching after Shane left Carmen at the altar…), this is a news-feed from the producers of the series, with interviews with the actors and other tidbits.
Leaping Thesbians – 8×10 Glossy at the Havana - This play by the leaping thesbian theatre company (by lesbians, about lesbians) will be showing on the east side beginning of April. Many thanks to Taylor Stutchbury, one of the thesbians, for sending in this information. I hope LQ readers will support this production and check out their site at: http://www.leapingthespians.ca/ April 16th will be a benefit for the Vancouver Dyke March and April 15th will be interpreted for the deaf.
Other fabulous LQ Items:
Recommend Lesbian-Owned Businesses
More Lesbian Book Reviews
Lesbian Musician Blog Feature
LQ Supporting Businesses
Lesbian Resources
Lesbian Agenda Calendar
Recurring Lesbian Events
Lesbian Travel Info supplied by Montreal Based ‘Girlports’
Site Contents
Lesbian Owned Businesses Also, send us stories about your favourite lesbian-owned business in BC. Don’t be shy!
Editorial Information
How to Advertise
Contact the Editor – Hey BC Lesbians! Send LQ your story ideas and announcements.
Welcome to the winter edition of Lesbian Quarterly.
Winter holidays. As someone who celebrates the secular version of Christmas, it’s a time of figuring out what to buy people and when to mail it so they get it on time. It’s also a time to focus on the things I like about the various winter holidays, and leave the rest.
My spiritual holiday is Winter Solstice, which is a nice thing to celebrate, since you can make it whatever you want to be. Lesbians are like that, taking what we like about popular culture and hopefully leaving the rest. Yule evergreens decorated with blessings, decking the halls, candles and blessing people with gifts belong to Solstice/Yule as much as Christmas, and that makes me happy.
About 20 years ago, young, broke and unwilling to go to my parents place for Christmas, I chose to gather my chosen family around me and start some new traditions. That year, my Solstice / birthday candlemaking celebration was born. Each year since then, the people I’m closest to, and some others that just seem nice, are invited to my home to sit around, drink mulled apple juice and dip candle wicks in tall jars of hot coloured wax. It’s nice, homey and peaceful, the kind of thing I’d want my children to remember fondly, if I was going to have children.
This quarter in LQ we have some resources for making lesbian and gay friendly purchases from companies with positive practices towards people like us. We also have a book review by guest contributor Jeanette Nelson, about a first novel written by a Canadian lesbian, published by a Canadian publishing company. As well, a new opportunity to recommend your favourite lesbian-owned businesses and artisans.
In This Issue
Check back here on December 1st for the new edition.
Advertizers and contributors – please get your information in by 5 days before the new edition. If you’re proposing a story idea, please contact the editor at least a month in advance.
I have more than one good friend who happens to have a mental illness. Two friends have recently ‘outed’ themselves to me as having been diagnosed with a mood disorder and schizophrenia respectively. I also have a close friend I have taken to the emergency department, and waited there with her all night, so she could get admitted and get the help she needed. She’s part of my ‘family’ and that’s what family does.
Lately I’ve been a bit immersed in the world of mental health services. One of my main clients in Technology Tailoring, my management and technology consulting business is the BC Schizophrenia Society. They’ve hired me to set up and run an online support group for families like ours who have people we care about with a mental illness. The society has lots of good information on how to cope well with having a loved one with a serious mental illness as well. The support group is just getting started so
it could use some brave lesbians (& other queer folks) to get the discussion rolling. I think it’s good for us to have a place to talk about supporting our kinds of families. You need to register to get access to the group. It’s a private discussion area and you can use your real name or a fake one if that suits you better. I hope you’ll check it out at www.support.bcss.org
Another program helping lesbian, gay, bi & trans families is Prism Alcohol and Drug Services, a Vancouver Coastal Health funded program which “offers counselling and groups for substance-use-affected lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit and queer people, and for trans people regardless of sexual orientation”. As the program site says, “With Prism, you can be open about all of who you are, and know that you will receive respectful treatment from knowledgeable counsellors.” This edition features an article about Prism and an interview with a lesbian staff member of the organization.
On a lighter note, this edition also features lesbian book blogs and book reviews and some miscellaneous and amusing bits of internet fluff about lesbians. I was pleased and amazed to discover all the good lesbian content out there, so I brought it home to show you. We also have a feature on lesbian musical duo Sugar Beach, who performed at this year’s Dyke March stage and are getting married September 1st here in Vancouver.
This edition has more stories than it’s had in a long time. I hope you enjoy this edition and please keep in mind that I post lots of juicy events listings in between quarterly editions. You can subscribe to the RSS feed to keep in touch or just check back from time to time when you’re looking for places to go and women to see…
As always, you can check out our regular features: Lesbian Resources, Lesbian Agenda, Supporting Businesses and the list of stories containing lesbian and women-owned businesses and lesbian and lesbian-led community organisations.
In this issue:
New LGTB Prism Alcohol and Drug Services Launched
Sugarbeach Wedding Announcement
Online support group for LGTB people caring for a person with a mental illness
Music Video – I wish I was a lesbian
Gloria Steinem on ‘Chick flicks’ and ‘Dick flicks’
Lesbian Book Reviews
“Lesbian Life” Blog Excerpts
Lesbian Resources
Lesbian Agenda,
Ongoing Lesbian Events
Businesses supporting LQ
This quarter we’re talking about favourite lesbian owned and women-owned businesses in BC. Also see our usual features the Lesbian Agenda, and Ongoing Lesbian Events. I’ve also catalogued all the lesbian-owned and women-owned businesses mentioned on the site, and you can see all of them by clicking on the links above, at lower right, or at the bottom of some articles. As well, we have an article about the new out and proud lesbian dragonboat team, Sisters in Synch and about Lesbians in the News. A special welcome to Lesbian Quarterly supporting business and psychotherapist Linda Dame, now featured on the Ongoing Lesbian Events page.
In case I don’t get the review written in time, my new favourite book with lesbian characters is Fire Logic, part of the ‘Elemental Logic’ series by Laurie J Marks. The central love story is between two women, set in a culture which seems to be flexible in it’s family structures and much lower in sexism than our own. The lesbian and gay and straight romances are woven into a story full of intuition, magic, integrity and bravery. Okay, I’m a computer nerd and like sci-fi and fantasy, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but really, spending some time in this world is good for the soul. I read it twice. In a row. Fortunately, the third book in the series is due out this July.
Welcome to Lesbian Quarterly’s rebirth online in our third year.
In this issue:
It’s still the same magazine, and if you prefer to print it and read it offline, it’s designed so you can just print this page to read offline.
Making LQ web-based means it’s faster and less expensive to produce and distribute. Without the need to distribute print copies or find ads to recover printing costs, I can focus my time on creating content.
LQ is a not-for-profit publication that I volunteer my time to maintain when not running my technology and nonprofit consulting practice ( www.sophiakelly.ca )
If women are interested in being part of seeing print versions continue contact me. Pro-lesbian organisations interested in reprinting or distributing content from LQ are invited to contact the editor for permission before proceeding.
Twas the night before deadline and LQ wasn’t even close to ready to go out. It’s been a busy few months, and I haven’t had time to beat the bushes for articles or ads, or to write much.
When I go to write for LQ, all I have passion for is the scary stories. For example, the one about how I still am appalled at alleged child abuser Robin Sharpe being glorified repeatedly as a free speech hero in queer newspapers, when incest survivors are being silenced (by the same social machinery that supports him) every day. (more…)
