Dr. Ann Gillies (00:12):

Hello everyone and welcome to Truth Talks. Today I am going to be talking with my good friend, Wilna van Beek, and we’re going to be discussing the events that happened in Saskatchewan last week. So, I’m going to read a couple of excerpts, well a few excerpts, from the local newspapers, the local online newspapers, both in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and again in Swift Current. And give you a little bit of just the journalism and the sense of being, I kind of called it a hit piece, so I’m going to read these to you. And then Bill and I are going to discuss a little bit of this and the actual event itself. So, in Yorkton, this is what the article said, pride organizations in Saskatchewan say that Canada’s ban on conversion therapy is being tested. And a longer part of that is it’s being tested because I was there and Vilna was there, and we were going to speak to people about the concerns we have about the sex education in our public schools.

(01:26):

Anyways, then they go on to say, we’re not calling it conversion therapy because we aren’t, but we’ve used a different term calling it affirmative therapy. So that’s a really interesting perspective because affirmative therapy is actually now a psychological term and they’re calling it a misleading because they’re saying that people are being misled by false information and that we are stoking people’s fears with false information. And then in both of the articles, both in Yorkton and in Swift Current, it says that Gillies (me) has been denounced by the Psychological Association of Alberta as being unaccredited and unlicensed, and that the event undermines the city of Swift Current’s Safe Places program. So this is really interesting. That Safe Places program was actually developed by a hockey player, young hockey player, Sheldon Kennedy, who had been sexually abused by his male coach. He and several other boys, hockey playing boys, and that male coach went to prison for it. But what the pride community is saying that this program that Sheldon developed provides safety for the LGBTQ. Well, that’s not what it was developed for. It was developed to provide safety from harms of sexual abuse of young boys in the whole area of hockey. Also in Swift Current,

(03:14):

they said that they were working with imperfect information. We do not know, these are their words. And it’s very interesting and my estimation of very poor journalism because no one contacted me to ask me what I was speaking on. And they say this a specific content of Miss, not Mrs., not even Ms., but Miss Gillies. Well, I’ve been married for over 30 years and I kind of do not like that reference. I’m not single. However, this is the journalism of the day. However, we do know. So, they don’t know what my speech was about, but we know that we’re dealing with somebody who has no issue misrepresenting herself in public. Alright, well, let’s bring in Wilna and let’s talk a little bit about some of these things because this was kind of the atmosphere. So Wilna, how are you doing this morning?

Wilna van Beek (04:14):

Well, sorry for laughing right away because I am doing good. Thank you. I really, I feel honored to be on your show today and hopefully share some of our thoughts. We traveled together this week. It was so good to be together. So just to answer that question, but what you have just read, wow, I can just shake my head.

Dr. Ann Gillies (04:44):

Well, I was kind of glad they left you alone Wilna, because I thought they would really target you because this is your neck of the woods, so to speak. But they left you alone. And I was really glad for that

Wilna van Beek (05:02):

because they have done this to me before. They have done a protest against me. And I mean, we can talk about that later, but I was surprised that my name didn’t come up in the paper and I thought, oh, this time at least I’m not guilty or something. You were the one that they were targeting and of course frustrated. I was frustrated to hear and to read all the accusations and false things that they posted against you. And that was really hard for me to read and to see that. And that is in a paper for people to read.

Dr. Ann Gillies (05:52):

Well, and I think we need to clarify, or I need to clarify here. Many of those comments were made by the president of the Pride Organization, I think in Swift Current or there was another one in Yorkton. So, there were a couple individuals who are very involved in the pride community that made these scandalous statements. I mean, they’re absolutely wrong. They’re lies, and that’s maybe strong, I would say that. Well, they are lies, but the reality is that these people need to do their homework before they start putting these kind of comments in an article. And not only did the pride individuals not do their homework, but the journalists didn’t do their homework because I have not been denounced. I am not unaccredited; I am not unlicensed. Apparently, the Psychological Association of Alberta had some information about me, but it was erroneous. And that’s really on the Psychological Association. So that’ll be an interesting thing where I take that because I am and have been licensed for over 20 years with the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. So, what they’re doing is very defamatory, both with the APA or not the APA, but the Psychological Association of Alberta, but also the pride community and the journalists. Somewhere this has to stop and what they call false information is what we are providing the public. And it is true and it’s verifiable research and they don’t like it. That’s the bottom line.

Wilna van Beek (07:49):

Yep. I agree. This is what they did to me. Like I said, 10 years ago without having a conversation with me, they went to my website and didn’t like what they read there because I have chosen to walk away from a lesbian lifestyle. And chose celibacy, they didn’t like that, so they disagreed with that. So, what did they do right away without having conversation with me, they just blasted me. I got emails, I’m a hater, I’m a homophobe. And of course, I received death threats via email because they make this uninformed decisions because they chose not to have a conversation with the source.

(08:40):

If the persons in Yorkton as well as Swift Current, if they would’ve had a honest, open, respectful conversation with you to find exactly, well, what is this about? What is the march, the Million March for Kids? What is this truly about? Can we focus on our children who we are trying to protect? But now all they did, they won’t listen. They just make all these accusations and send out false information. And then of course the media just blows it up out of proportion. And it frustrates me that they are kind of one-sided and didn’t say anything basically to protect you. So, we have a problem.

Dr. Ann Gillies (09:36):

We do have a problem. And one thing I wanted to add is that the organizers in Swift Current actually sent an email to, I think his name’s Shaun Hanna, who had made all of these accusations, false accusations against us, and they wanted to arrange a meeting. It took him several days to answer, and they did actually, I think the day before the event was to take place. They had a meeting with this man, interestingly enough, because I mean, he’s all up in arms. This is conversion therapy and all, it isn’t at all what we’re talking about, but you can read into whatever you want to. So anyways, the organizers went and met with him and his father. So, they talked to him and they did a really good job because they said to him, do you understand what is happening in our public education with the youngest of children, right through the whole public education world?

(10:43):

And they began to explain what we were trying to do in educating people with what’s going on in this school system. And he admitted both him and his dad admitted to the organizers. We didn’t have a clue. They didn’t know. And at that point, their guard dropped. Now, I would love to see this young man write an apology and put it in the paper because that’s the next step. When you do something, when you slander someone, there needs to be some kind of recompense. Now I have already, now it’s cost me a little bit because I immediately decided that I wasn’t going to let this one go. And so, I had a lawyer then draft a letter to both Shaun and the other, it was a woman in Yorkton. So, they both got a letter from my lawyer, a cease-and-desist letter. Anyways, I haven’t heard anything more from them, but it’s been pretty quiet. The other thing, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this Wilna, because I haven’t, there has been nothing from the journalist that was at the actual event in Swift Current. He videotaped the entire thing, but I have yet to see anything written. So what? Yeah, very interesting.

Wilna van Beek (12:06):

What is this about? I have been looking online, actually I haven’t been yesterday, but I have gone online to see if anything has been written about the event in Swift Current and absolutely nothing. So this to me just speaks volumes again is like on whose side are they? And of course, yes, there was a journalist in the room. He was actually standing right across me in the back of the building. He was standing the whole time. And several times during my talk, I looked at him in his eyes when I made some pretty serious statements and what we are for and why are we doing what we are doing. He was making notes the whole time, and he had his camera going the whole time, which is like, is it videotaping? What is he doing? But yeah, not a word in the newspaper. And that is really disappointing to me because has he heard the truth? And now is he not willing to share the truth on what he has heard? Because he heard it out of both of our mouths. One statement after the other is, we are here because we want to protect our innocent children from being sexualized in public schools. This was the message. And so why are they not saying anything about it? This is pretty alarming.

Dr. Ann Gillies (13:51):

Well, so I have to confess because at the end of the night, just after I spoke and he was kind of finished videotaping and everything, I prayed, and I just asked God that he would not be allowed to write lies. And so maybe that’s why there’s nothing there, Wilna, because honestly, and you’re absolutely right, the media is so extremely biased and quite honestly, I don’t know how anyone coming to that event and my speech will be on Spotify. I have yours from Yorkton, a really good video, Wilna, that I’m going to put up on my website as well. It might already be there so people know what we’re talking about. But the reality is you couldn’t sit in that room and not be compelled to protect children and not have your eyes open. I know that there were a couple teachers, one teacher was a little offended, and this is because we we’re challenging their sacred cows a little bit. And that is the education system. And so needless to say, teachers sometimes feel lots of direct assault against them, and it’s not, there’s lots of good teachers, but the actual hierarchy, the hierarchy of the education system is corrupt.

Wilna van Beek (15:25):

And I think when a person came to me afterwards and said that we were too harsh towards teachers, but I mean during my presentations and during your presentations, we have both said it several times that we know there are wonderful teachers out there that are doing their best and have the best interest of young children in front of them. But the reality is what this person was challenging me and said that under our premier here in Saskatchewan, this indoctrination and this teaching is not taking place. Well, that is not true because I have two examples. One is after I dropped you off at the airport on Thursday, as you were flying back to your home, I had a phone call from a person who attended one of our events and just to protect her privacy, I won’t say which event, but anyway, she said she went to her principal and wanted to know about the sex education in that specific school. And then the teacher, actually the principal affirmed that, yes, we do these classes in the school, but you as a mom can now decide if you want to remove your child from these classes. Of course, the mom said, of course I’m going to do this, but we know that the kids is going to bully this child again. But then he said this to the mom, is that, but we have sex ed classes and children over the grade eight or something,

(17:27):

they have to go to all these classes. And of course, my opinion about all of this is this has to be removed completely. This was the one conversation, this is happening in a school not very far from where I live. The second affirmation that this is taking place is I had a conversation with a friend of mine about two weeks ago talking about the Million March for Kids. And then she said, her friend is a librarian in a school not very far from me. And the librarian friend complained to her about materials that have been showing up and that she is forced to place in the library, the school library for our young children to watch and to look at. And so, it affirms again, it is in our schools, and as I’ve said it explicitly, either you remove your child from public school now or you get together with other parents and put tremendous pressure on school boards and ask for these material to be removed because we see what it’s doing to our children. It’s no secret.

Dr. Ann Gillies (18:44):

Absolutely. Well, absolutely. And one thing about the sex ed curriculum, certainly there are sex ed classes, but the actual curriculum is meant to be embedded into every single class. So, the affirming of homosexuality, the affirming of bisexuality, the affirming of transsexual and transgender that that is, and how they do that is math class 2 plus 2, and they’ll say maybe a bisexual or something. I mean, this sounds really ludicrous, but there have been indications that it’s embedded into every class in one way or another. And that’s kind of ridiculous in my sense. And I’m sure it’s not in every school. You know something, Wilna, when you’re talking, I want to remind listeners that Wilna lives in a very rural area of Saskatchewan. We’re not talking about a thousand children at a school here in elementary school or between kindergarten and grade nine. We’re talking about smaller schools or central schools, but it’s not like we’re in the midst of big cities. These things are being really promoted in the very rural areas. And that’s shocking to many people because they think because they live in rural Canada, that this can’t happen in their rural schools. And I want to say absolutely it can. It’s mandated right across every province, and it comes down from the United Nations sex education curriculum, and it’s very, very, would I say their curriculum is definitely about the sexualization of children from junior kindergarten on. So it’s a threat to every child in every school system.

Wilna van Beek (20:57):

Yeah. I don’t know if you remember what I said in what it’s doing to our children. I used the example of something South African saying because that’s where I was born and where I raised. In South Africa, we have a saying, and I’ll say it in Afrikaans, it means early, early ripe, early rot. And I used the example where I said in the springtime way back in South Africa, when the peaches were supposed to ripen, we would go into the orchard, and we would touch every peach because we wanted a ripe peach. And then as we put pressure on these peaches, it actually caused damage to them. And then the peach would rot instead of ripening naturally. And this is my strong stance against sex education, which should start at home at the appropriate age. This is not something that should be done in schools to start with because we now put pressure on young people who are not ready for this conversation. And we are not only confusing them, but we are misleading them into really falling down the cliff and early ripe, early rot. And so, this was kind of the example that I used when I was talking. So

Dr. Ann Gillies (22:36):

It’s a great metaphor, Wilna. It’s a great metaphor because it really does encompass the whole idea of early childhood sexualization and early childhood sexualization pushes children. Usually that happened in decades past. That happened because a child was sexually abused as a very young, usually even before school age or before the age of 13 or 14. So then the child is sexualized from that young age, and they are already then predisposed to more experiences. Predisposed, well, I’ll just say it, they’re predisposed to accepting pedophilic advances. We are now, I just think we’re on the cliff of a huge, I just think a huge explosion of child rape. And that is really scary, really, really scary because we know that children who have been sexually abused, especially chronically sexually abused in their childhood are predisposed to all kinds of other behaviors. And that their self-esteem is so wounded and damaged that they go looking for love in any place they can find it. And sometimes in that desperation, they find themselves entrenched in very, very harmful practices. So Wilna, do you have any kind of last comments for this section? We’re actually going to do another filming and talk more specifically about you, Wilna, and about your experiences because they’re very, very important to this whole conversation.

Wilna van Beek (24:30):

Well, I am just so grateful for the rising up of many parents at this time, both you and that we have been praying, we have been warning, we have been trying to equip our societies on this for a very long time, and it has felt that it’s kind of falling on deaf ears. But what we are seeing, I’m so grateful for, I don’t know how to pronounce his name, the Muslim father.

Dr. Ann Gillies (25:13):

Oh, yes. Kamel. Kamel El-Cheikh,

Wilna van Beek (25:17):

This father who stood up. He’s a true shepherd of his flock. And for listeners that don’t know, I’m a physical shepherd. I have sheep, and this father has stood up and is taking his place as a shepherd and says, I will train my children. I will equip my children and I’m going to protect my children against the onslaught that is coming. I am so grateful for his standing up. And now we see a rising up of many, many parents in this nation, Canada. And I want to say to the listeners, even today, this was just the beginning and we are not going to stop. And there’s a war going on. And yeah, the war didn’t start by the parents. The war started by the activists who don’t agree with what we are standing for, and it stood to protecting the kids. But I’m just grateful for every parent that has stood up and say, not under my watch. So grateful for them.

Dr. Ann Gillies (26:33):

And yeah, I just want to maybe add a couple things there that I know you’ll agree with Wilna, is that I was really, really pleasantly surprised at both venues, both in Yorkton and in Swift Current at the number of people, parents and grandparents that came out. I think there were about 200 in York, no. Yes, about 200 in Yorkton. And it’s not a big community and about 120 in Swift Current. But one thing we should just mention is that in Swift Current, the activists came out and we didn’t talk about that, but they came out and initially they blocked the doors into the venue where we were. We had to, some of our guys had to go out and say, please, could you move out of the way because you can’t obstruct the entranceway? And they did, but they still continued to intimidate people. They moved to either side of the doors, but they were chanting, they were loud. And when they would walk kind of at the outside on the sidewalk between the two lanes, so to speak, and people had to still navigate their way in. So, it was quite intimidating. There were a lot of people that just drove by that didn’t come in. So, the fact that we had 120 parents and grandparents that came in and some teachers and other people, it was good. And I think it was an exceptional experience. So that’s our take on it. And the activists, we invited them, right, Wilna, we invited them to come in

Wilna van Beek (28:17):

and they chose not to. Some of the activists back in Yorkton, they said even with the march on the 20th of September, they did not attend or do a counter- protest because they said, we don’t want to be in the presence of people who hate. It was like, you have no idea. And I encourage people to listen to my talk from the Million March. If you type in “count your sheep daily and know the status of your flock”, if you type that in into YouTube, that was my speech on the day of the march. They have accused us of being haters. And even the talk on the Tuesday evening when we were in Yorkton, I would encourage you, and you said that you have it taped and you have posted it. I would encourage people to listen to it, and I don’t think there’s any hate coming from anything that I said. In fact, I got so emotional that night,

(29:32):

(29:32):

I often tell people I never know when I will get emotional, but caring so deeply about our young children who are being indoctrinated and we need to protect them. So anyway, I can go on and on.

Dr. Ann Gillies (29:47):

Yeah. Well, thank you for being with us today, Wilna. I really, really appreciate that. And we’re going to talk again, and we’re going to talk about your story because it’s a very powerful one. Thank you for tuning in today for my conversation with Wilna van Beek, I encourage you to go to her website, godgazers.com, and even purchase her book when Gay Comes Home. She’s a wonderful lady, and thank you again for watching. I encourage you again to check her out and have a blessed day.

Narrator (30:28):

You’ve been listening to Truth Talks with Dr. Ann. Thank you so much for joining us today. You can find Ann’s books, blog, and sign up for the newsletter by going to restoringthemosaic.ca.