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Articles

Vol. 10 No. 3 (2019)

Stakeholder Perspectives on Ontario's Bill 13: A Macrosystem-level Intervention Supporting Gay-Straight Alliances and Other Initiatives Affirming LGBT Youth

Submitted
June 5, 2023
Published
2019-09-23

Abstract

Researchers have argued for the positive impact education legislation can have as a macrosystem-level intervention on the implementation of microsystem- and mesosystem-level interventions (e.g., Gay-Straight Alliances) empirically documented to support sexual and gender minority students. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative Community-Based Research study that explored the perspectives of advocates for LGBT students from Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, on the impact of Bill 13; a bill purportedly proposed to address the needs of minority youth in publicly-funded schools. This paper emphasizes the value of legislation that is able to both explicitly mandate the implementation of LGBT-affirming initiatives empirically recognized to promote student mental health, and provide flexibility for advocates to develop new initiatives that will meet the specific needs of their minority students.