FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TORONTO – Saturday, January 26, 2013 - Kathleen Wynne, the MPP for Don Valley West and former cabinet minister, prevailed in the Ontario Liberal party leadership convention in Toronto on the third ballot with 1150 votes and 57% of delegates. By winning the leadership, Wynne also made history by becoming Canada’s very first openly gay provincial premier.
“We at ProudPolitics would first like to congratulate Kathleen on her big win, we are absolutely excited to have an openly LGBT icon not only lead one of the major political parties, but also lead the entire province”, said Louroz Mercader, Chairman of the Board and co-founder of ProudPolitics . “She has paved the way for aspiring LGBT leaders who may have doubted their ability to lead and participate in our democracy due to their sexual orientation”
“There were a lot of naysayers who doubted Kathleen’s electability, but tonight she demonstrated her province-wide appeal and her ability to fight a hard policy-driven campaign. We at ProudPolitics believe that LGBT leaders are the biggest champions for inclusion and equality, and are excited to see the social change that Kathleen’s going to bring to Canada’s most populous province”, said Arthur Kong, Executive Director and co-founder of ProudPolitics.
About ProudPolitics
ProudPolitics is Canada’s only multi-partisan LGBT organization aimed at diversifying the face and voice of Canada’s politics by helping emergent openly LGBT leaders realize their potential to serve and win elections to all levels of government through candidate support, fundraising, networking, and outreach.
For more information visit: www.proudpolitics.org
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Contact:
Arthur Kong
Executive Director
[email protected]
416.833.6880
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TORONTO – Wednesday, January 23, 2013- The Toronto Star released an editorial on Monday January 21 titled “Sandra Pupatello is Ontario Liberals’ best bet”. In the editorial, the author questioned Kathleen Wynne’s electability in part due to her sexual orientation by quoting her as having called herself a “lesbian from Toronto”.
“Without providing the context in which that comment was made, the author of the editorial perpetuates negative perceptions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community, and takes away from her platform, and her experience”, said Arthur Kong, Executive Director and co-founder of ProudPolitics, “The editorial implies that people from the LGBT community are not viable candidates to serve, participate, and lead due to their sexual orientation”.
Kathleen Wynne is the only LGBT candidate in the race to become the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, and premier of Ontario.
ProudPolitics is an organization whose goal is incubate, support, and celebrate the achievements of emerging and elected LGBT leaders. Our network expresses our disagreement and disappointment in the Toronto Star’s editorial.
About ProudPolitics
ProudPolitics is Canada’s only multi-partisan LGBT organization aimed at diversifying the face and voice of Canada’s politics by helping emergent openly LGBT leaders realize their potential to serve and win elections to all levels of government through candidate support, fundraising, networking, and outreach.
For more information visit: www.proudpolitics.org
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Contact:
Arthur Kong
Executive Director
[email protected]
416.833.6880
The ProudPolitics team had the fortunate opportunity to attend the Victory Fund 2012 LGBT Leaders Conference in Long Beach, California from Nov . 28 to Dec 2. We were absolutely humbled and inspired by the amazing network of LGBT leaders across the US and the amazing level of solidarity and support. We have a lot of work here in Canada to foster this non-pratisan group of LGBT leaders who hope to drive change through political and public leadership.
ProudPolitics also had a chance to meet with team members from the Human Rights Campaign (www.hrc.org) in Washington D.C. HRC is the leading LGBT advocacy group in the United States. Not only are they instrumental in advocating for various issues affecting the LGBT community in the US (e.g. workplace discrimination, work to repeal DOMA, etc…), they are also instrumental in getting openly LGBT leaders or LGBT friendly allies elected into federal public office.
Their continued support and guidance will be critical to the success of ProudPolitics
On Monday, May 21, ProudPolitics had the fortunate opportunity to meet with the national Log Cabin Republicans (www.logcabin.org) team in Washington DC.
Both in the US and in Canada, a significant portion of the LGBT community, contrary to popular opinion, do in fact, vote conservative. As a multi-partisan organization, it is ProudPolitics’ responsibility to reach out to learn how established and well-respected LGBT groups like the Log Cabin Rebpucans build relations, influence, and interact with conservative voters and the conservative partisan groups. ProudPolitics also believes that the best way to create positive change and progress in less-LGBT-aware constituencies is to be inclusive and have openly LGBT leaders across the spectrum.
(in photo, Casey Pick – LCR Programs Director ; Chris; Arthur; R. Clarke Cooper – LCR Executive Director; Louroz; CJ; Christian Berle – LCR Deputy Executive Director)
The ProudPolitics team traveled to Washington D.C. today for a 4-day trip to engage with significant LGBT stakeholders. Today, we had the fortunate opportunity to meet with the team at the Victory Fund (www.victoryfund.org). We were able to gather lots of best practices and programming ideas that we can apply to our initiative. The Victory Fund, as a strategic ally and friend, will be an invaluable resource moving forward.
We hope you will consider joining the ProudPolitics Canada delegation to the Victory Fund and Institute’s 2012 International LGBT Leadership Conference in Long Beach, California November 29 – December 2, 2012!
Join us as we meet, network, and learn from politically minded LGBTQ leaders from all over the world, who are as equally passionate as we are in promoting equality through public service and leadership.
For more information and to register, please visit http://www.lgbtleaders.org. Don’t hestitate to email us if you have any questions. We sincerely hope to have you there with us!
