Category: Life

The picture of the television screen above was taken from my hotel room in Toronto a few weeks ago. The caption read “Forcing Liberal Agenda on Kids” and was referring to the new provisions in the Ontario curriculum that would make schools more inclusive for queer students. Naturally, the accompanying imagery wasn’t of children, but of a cross-dresser, and the guest invited on the show was homophobic.

The above image, meanwhile, is a full-page advertisement that ran across the country in the National Post last month. It also speaks out against the new plans to make schools more welcoming. The Post would later apologize on the basis of the manipulative nature of the advertisement. The Toronto Sun, perhaps in reaction to this apology, decided to then run the advertisement themselves. The individual behind the ad campaign was Charles McVety, who had earlier asserted “that homosexuals prey on children.”

During this past fall election in Ontario, the Progressive Conservatives, the official opposition party in this province, also took aim at the plans for more inclusive schools. Like the other ads, it was deeply misleading. Some of the quotes were fabrications not found in the material they cited. This is the party that came very close to being in charge of education in this province.

In August, the Ottawa-Carleton School Board (OCSB) decided to march in Pride to show solidarity with its students. This was too much for the editors at the Ottawa Sun, which ran the news as a page 2 piece along with the above image to maximize impact. As expected, most of their readers were quite incensed and the paper was flooded with homophobic comments.

The reality was of course quite a joyful matter, with teachers and staff showing their support for students. I took the photo above of them at Pride. Unfortunately, it isn’t just conservative media outlets and religious lobbies that have pushed against all forms of support for queer students. Some of the opposition has come from the school environment as well.

One in three students in this province are in a school where Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) are banned. While much of the blame for this ban on support groups deservedly is directed towards the religious arm of this province’s education system, parents too bear some of the responsibility. As it was described of parents in a meeting at the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) debating the non-discrimination policies introduced by the Ontario government:

Over the course of the evening, the TCDSB heard claims that GSAs “indoctrinate” and “confuse” youth by “normalizing” a “dangerous lifestyle.” Many others demanded that any reference to “sexual orientation” be removed from the document. The sense is that if students start talking about their identity, they will begin having sex.

The crowd was distinctly divided by age. Most of those who stood to speak were adults who argued that allowing a GSA would open the door to “sexual promiscuity and disease.”

One parent quoted the Catholic Catechism that says gays are “objectively disordered.”

“There is nothing wrong with telling our kids [being gay] is a dangerous lifestyle,” said another parent, who refused to give her name.

Whereas none of the aforementioned examples of prejudice would be deemed acceptable were it racist or antisemitic in nature, it is still far too often categorized as valid criticism on matters of young students and their orientation or gender identity.

So to simply blame bullies and educators for the difficulties of students over their orientation or gender identity ignores a significant part of the problem. Schools do not operate in a void. There are a number of organizations and individuals that are successful in preventing initiatives to make schools a healthy environment for queer students. We must come to challenge these entities as we do the bullies.

The new school year has come, and contrary to my hopes, LGBT students in Catholic schools are still banned from forming Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs.

However, to satisfy the provincial government, these schools are to roll out their own groups using a framework devised by the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association which is to manage the issue with a “Catholic perspective.” This is the same perspective that dictates that being gay is “intrinsically disordered and contrary to natural law.”

I wrote about the absurdity of such a solution in a previous blog entry:

Gay-Straight Alliances are student run clubs that provide support for students affected by LGBT issues and their allies.  The good they’ve done in making schools safer for students have been espoused over and over by the Ministry of Education.

Meanwhile, the framework clubs came to be out of an opposition to the genuine support offered by GSAs. Not exactly a promising start. Furthermore, its mandate is being worked out by the same institution whose leadership in Ontario dictates that gay students must be viewed as intrinsically disordered. The same institution that continues to marginalize queer students, sometimes to absurd lengths.

Imagine if an organization who believed that racial minorities were “intrinsically disordered” had decided to come up with their own version of an anti-racism club, as a means to prevent real anti-racism clubs from taking hold. I think it’s quite evident how students would not likely be served with such alternatives.

This is a strategy of co-opting a support group as to prevent the help it would provide from reaching students. These doppelganger clubs satisfy both the requirements of the provincial government and the views of the Catholic boards, which continues its opposition to the acceptance of sexual diversity. As such, it is unlikely that we’ll see any further movement from these two organizations on the matter.

The only ones left behind in this deal are the very ones this was supposed to be about: queer students seeking genuine support in a homophobic system.