The Halton Catholic District School Board serves 29,000 elementary and secondary school students in the municipalities of Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Halton Mills. It has enacted a policy to ban Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs from forming in their schools.
For those who aren’t familiar with GSAs, they’re support groups for queer students and their allies. A safe haven where students can talk openly, free of the pressures and ridicule they might encounter at home, in their community, or at school.
Mrs. Alice Anne LeMay, chair of the Halton Catholic District School Board defends the ban on such clubs. From the article in Xtra:
“We don’t have Nazi groups either,” rationalizes board chair Alice Anne LeMay. “Gay-straight alliances are banned because they are not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
“If a gay student requests a gay-straight alliance they would be denied,” she says flatly.
In other words, the Catholic church demonizes gays, and therefore so will her school board. To equate this kind of support group to something akin to Nazi-ism is sadly indicative of her overall views of that segment of the students under her care.
Michael Pautler, the education director of the school board noted:
“All students that attend school should be able to feel free of harassment and are protected from any forms of persecution or anything that makes them feel marginalized.”
Indeed they should Mr. Pautler. Yet it must be hard for a queer student not to feel marginalized, when their own school enacts policies to marginalize them. It must be hard to feel free of persecution and harassment, when their own school is headed by someone who believes that their very existence is flawed, and denies them the opportunity to create the one space where they would be free of harassment and persecution.
When you deny support groups to those who need them, what do you think happens? When those who need support don’t get it, what do you think happens? I’ll give you a hint: the suicide rate for gay teens is four times that of their straight counterparts. We’re talking lives here.
This is prejudice, pure and simple. And no tax dollars of mine should be supporting this kind of idiocy.
Shame on you Alice Anne LeMay.
Update January 17th: The Ottawa Catholic School Board also doesn’t allow Gay-Straight Alliance clubs. They learned from Halton’s public relations mistakes though. Instead of equating gays with Nazis, they said they don’t allow the clubs in name only “because the Assembly of Ontario Bishops — to whom school boards look for spiritual guidance — prefer a name that reflects a more general focus on equity and social justice.” That’s a really nice marketing spin.
Simple rhetorical question: are the groups to explicitly support LGBT students allowed? No. Why not? Because the Church doesn’t want them. They want to marginalize it’s purpose by incorporating issues, under the guise of equity and justice. Cognitive dissonance much?
