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

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)

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:

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

• The Skin Beneath
• Human Rights Campaign Holiday Shopping Guide
• Recommend Lesbian-Owned Businesses
• More Lesbian Book Reviews
• Lesbian Musician Blog Feature
• LQ Supporting Businesses
• Lesbian Resources
• Lesbian Agenda Calendar
• Recurring Lesbian Events
• Site Contents
• Lesbian Owned Businesses
• Editorial Information

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.

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:

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.

In this issue:

• Challenges Together: Rhizome Cafe
• Catherine McNeill (poetry) - let us give thanks
• Lisa (Annuska) van der Pol (business update)- Boogy Woogy in Victoria
• Sophia Kelly – (poetry) You touch
• Ongoing Lesbian Events
• The Lesbian Agenda
• About LQ / LQ Masthead

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.

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.

Scarier yet, I imagine writing about the pink elephant in the living room of the feminist community in Vancouver; the ill-kept but not-public secret of why many feminist and community activists and leaders (including me) want nothing to do with a certain litigious and predatory women’s organization, but few will say it publicly.

However, I’m unlikely to write about those things soon. I’m older and busier now, and I write (among other things) for a living. I don’t have the energy to take on the thankless (or worse) task of fighting those battles publicly or to volunteer my time as much as I have been for LQ these last two years.

It’s hard to be fully out. Being out as a lesbian or even a feminist is relatively easy with practice. Being out as someone who has thought long and seriously about some of the issues and found she disagrees with the some of the most vocal received truths of her community is harder.

I understand that newspapers exist to sell ads. Newspapers whose major advertisers are porn producers exist to sell a certain kind of commodified sex, primarily to men, and I think that unfortunately shapes what realities are seen as valid. If that’s all we can read, it becomes ’the voice’ of our community.

In creating LQ, I wanted it to be a voice separate from the ‘post-modern libertarian’ queer community that has enough places to express itself. I wanted to celebrate lesbians, and women’s bravery, knowledge and strength, not the free speech of child-abusers. Do you have a passion for covering news and views about lesbians not covered in the queer press? Story angles that are perhaps unfashionable, but constructive for lesbians and women? Do you want to profile your local hera or women-focussed project? If you are interested in writing for LQ, send your work along or drop me a line. 400 words maximum, about lesbians and by lesbians (trans-inclusive). You don’t have to be ‘a writer’. The deadline is ‘as soon as possible, how about today?’ LQ needs regular contributors to keep going.

- Sophia Kelly

Pdf file for printing: LQ Colour Print Version