Red Deer Catholic School Controversy

About

Red Deer Catholic School Controversy refers to a controversy involving Monique LaGrange, a trustee of Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools, in which she said the "Holy Spirit" told her to "go for it" and post a meme that compared the LGBTQ+ community to Nazi Germany. The news became a topic of discussion in September 2023 on Twitter / X, Facebook and Instagram, among other sites.

Overview

On September 4th, 2023, the Instagram^[1] page @yegwave revealed that Monique LaGrange, a Red Deer Catholic school board trustee is "facing calls for resignation and significant backlash following a controversial social media post comparing the LGBTQ2S+ community to Nazi Germany." The post (shown below) revealed a Facebook story posted by LaGrange linking an old picture of kids holding nazi flags and kids in a classroom holding the LGBTQ+ flag. The deleted story was paired with the caption "Brainwashing is brainwashing," which garnered 22,000 likes in a month.

Developments

On October 17th, 2023, a 15-page document^[2] released by the school board revealed that LaGrange took to Facebook toward the end of August to share the meme and that she went on to say that "the Holy Spirit told her to 'Go for it.'"

Online Reactions

Online, the news became the topic of discussions and hoaxes demanding the resignation of LaGrange from the school. For example, on October 18th, 2023, the TikTok^[3] page @yourmorningctv explained the story in a video (shown below, left), garnering over 84,000 plays and 6,300 likes in a day. On October 19th, TikToker^[4] @lisab0923 also recapped the incident to her audience (shown below, right), which received roughly 9,500 plays and 1,400 likes in a few hours.

Search Interest

External References