Category: GSAs

Following up on my last post, I sent this message to my MPP asking for clarification on his statements:

Thank you very much for your reply.

I did hear the comments made on behalf of the Premier. It was not clear to me, however, if this meant that students would no longer be forbidden from starting Gay-Straight Alliance clubs come September. Will that in fact be the case?

– Julien

Yesterday, I received a response back from his assistant:

Hi Julien,

My apologies for the delay in response. I’d like to confirm that students can now start Gay-Straight Alliances in all schools throughout the province.

[Name Removed]
Senior Constituency Assistant
Office of Yasir Naqvi MPP, Ottawa Centre

If this is true, this is big news. It would be a departure from Mr. Naqvi’s previous statements, which mirrored the party line. It would be a great victory for LGBT youth in Ontario Catholic schools.

I forwarded the emails to Xtra!, who got back to me saying they’d follow up. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Is this in fact true? Did the assistant misspeak? I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

Update August 25th, 2011: I was able to talk to Mr. Naqvi in person at a town hall meeting that he held. Unfortunately, the assistant did in fact misspeak. The Catholic boards would continue the ban on any club with the word “gay”, though Mr. Naqvi assured me that students could rename the club and the content would not be censored by the schools. I have reason to believe that this won’t be the case, but time will tell.

A little over three months ago, I sent a letter to my local MPP discussing the ban on Gay-Straight Alliances in Ontario Catholic schools and imploring action. His name is Yasir Naqvi, and he also happens to be the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education. Yesterday, his reply arrived.

Dear Mr. McArdle,

Thank you for your emails regarding the Catholic school system in Ontario. I appreciate the time you have taken to write and share your concerns with me, and I would like to apologize for the delay in my response. Every student in Ontario’s publicly funded schools is entitled to respect, equity, and an education free from discrimination and harassment. Students do better in a respectful and inclusive environment, and those in our publicly funded schools are fortunate to benefit from an environment where kids from all ages, races, and backgrounds share a classroom. Their differences help to make our province’s schools among the very best in the world.

Last fall, our government required Ontario school boards to implement one of the most progressive inclusive education policies in North America. Every school board now must have their own Equity Policy, including Catholic and Francophone boards. Our Equity and Inclusive Education Policy is clear; discrimination based on race, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation are unacceptable, and boards and schools all have a role to play in helping to build more inclusive schools. We take matters like this very seriously: we have also passed legislation to make reporting violent incidents mandatory, and added “bullying” to the Safe Schools Act. We are focused on ensuring that all students have the supports in our schools through student-led forums to feel welcome, safe and free from discrimination and harassment.

I know that student support groups for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) students have been controversial within some Ontarian schools. In September, 2010 our government presented Gay Straight Alliances as an option for boards to build more inclusive, respectful schools, but it has been left to school boards to decide whether or not to implement them. However, earlier this month the Premier stated that “…effective this September, high school students who want their school to have a student support group for LGBT students will have one. This is not a matter of choice for school boards or principals. If students want it, they will have it.” I am very proud of our government’s firm stance on this issue. We must all ensure that every Ontarian student feels welcome, safe and supported in an environment free from discrimination and harassment. Gender-based and homophobic bullying is unacceptable in all schools.

Once again, thank you for writing. Please do not hesitate to contact me at my Community Office at any time to share your thoughts and concerns. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Yasir Naqvi, MPP
Ottawa Centre

I thanked him for the reply, and asked him if this meant that students would no longer be forbidden from starting Gay-Straight Alliances.

That clarification is needed. The Catholic schools are currently working on a framework for their own version of the clubs, and the skeptic in me believes that the McGuinty government would be content to keep the ban in place and if it meant the introduction of these new clubs. I have reasons to suspect this will be the case given the exchange quoted below:

Does McGuinty’s announcement mean, then, that there will be GSAs that are called GSAs and supported by Catholic school administrators next year? “Premier McGuinty did not use the words GSAs,” Murray wrote in a text message to Xtra. “He said ‘support groups for LGBT youth.”

Ignoring the acceptance of intolerance with the persistence of the ban, the problem with this is that there is a world of difference between a GSA and what I’ll call the “framework clubs.”

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.

Update: Naqvi’s comments for this article gives further credence to the scenario I suggest. I’ll be the first to celebrate should I turn out to be wrong.

Update: Xtra! has an interesting article on the situation.

On Tuesday, the Minister of Education for the province of Ontario attended a breakfast to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. It was there where the Xtra! finally caught up to her, and was able to talk about the Gay-Straight Alliances and its province-wide ban in Catholic schools.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the minister sides with Catholic boards on the ban. Though I should have expected this outcome given the previous tepid response from the provincial politicians on the matter, it still came as a shock.

It’s a disheartening development, because short of the courts, the provincial government is the highest authority on the matter. So now you have the schools, the boards, their religious overseers, and finally the provincial government all backing homophobic policies.

What’s particularly discouraging is that I feel like there’s no one left to turn to. The provincial government was the last level in the Catholic boards’ chain of command that could have put an end to this bigotry.

I’m very skeptical on there being swift progress on this issue. Despite the negative press, the Liberals are getting out of this relatively unscathed and the Conservatives are keeping silent. Meanwhile, the minister’s endorsement of some initiatives to counter homophobia is serving as an effective shield to defuse criticism.

The burden is on advocacy groups and dissenting voices, but I don’t know what these voices are worth if there’s no one left to listen.

I contacted my local MPP, Yasir Naqvi, who also happens to be the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education. I promptly received a reply from his staffer informing me that he’d get back to me. That was over a month ago. I sent an email to follow-up the other day, and I was told by the staffer that a response was forthcoming. I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Naqvi.

A thank you to Duncan for catching and informing me of the typographical error.

An article came out in the Xtra today discussing the current state of the ban on Gay-Straight Alliance clubs at the Halton District Catholic School Board. It’s been four months since the issue garnered the attention of the national press, but for all the talk, there has been no progress.

The situation with the Ottawa Catholic School Board has been as dismal. When they don’t spend their time stipulating why they ban GSAs, they deny even having the ban. As I’ve explained before, their denial relies on a game of semantics, but it works. Just like their framing of the situation as a move that’s good for equity and social justice.

If it weren’t the well-being of students at hand, I might find the entire situation comical. Here we have a collection of school boards, all fiercely opposing the existence of these weekly lunch gatherings of students who talk about ending bullying and making their schools safer for everyone.

From the perspective of one who is without prejudice, there is no downside to these clubs. The Ministry of Education praises them over and over for making schools better. They don’t cost anything to operate. The students run them themselves. It’s another club to add in the pool, along with the chess and debating clubs.

Things get a little more complicated when prejudice is thrown into the mix. Only then does all of the good of the above appear in a negative light. I’ve found that people have been apprehensive of calling the Ottawa Catholic School Board and those like it homophobic, but there is no denying it. It’s time to call a spade a spade.

Hesitant still? Let’s go over the facts. In Ontario catholic schools:

• Guidelines are issued on how to constrain a specific minority. It calls the entire minority “objectively disordered.”
• The name that the minority goes by is banned as a word.
• Those from the minority are prohibited from having relationships. It’s encouraged for everyone else.
• Student-run support groups for the minority are forbidden.

Imagine if the minority was anything other than queer youth. Politicians would jump into action and the policies would be rescinded immediately. Sadly, the thought of discrimination is still acceptable when it comes to this issue.

‎”The goal of Catholic school boards “is to end discrimination against anyone in our society,” said Nancy Kirby, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association. “But we still have to follow the church teachings.”

Only on this issue does it seem to be okay to have the words “end discrimination” share the same sentence with the word “but.” Only on this issue have we said that there can be exceptions with regards to protection from discrimination.

Homophobia is ripe throughout the Ottawa Catholic School Board and the other Catholic school boards here in Ontario. It is a travesty that no one in a position of power has had the courage to do anything about it. It’s a tragedy that it requires courage at all.

Much has happened since I wrote my last entry on the matter of Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs and the Ottawa Catholic Schools. The Xtra wrote a piece on the petition, which has now exceeded 550 signatures. I was interviewed on CBC radio, and their online news section gave it some attention.

Meanwhile, a girl from a separate Catholic school board in Ontario was denied her request to start a GSA. It made the news, and prompted an opposition minister to bring it up during question period. Put on the spot, McGuinty finally responded:

“We are making it perfectly clear to all our school boards, all our schools, all our principals, all our teachers and all our students that it is unacceptable in Ontario to discriminate based on race, gender, religion or sexual orientation,” the Premier said in Question Period.

But Mr. McGuinty stopped short of stating that the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board was actually in breach of the ministry’s code on equity, saying that “boards can find different ways to ensure that they adhere to those policies.”

The provincial government wasn’t going to intervene, leaving the handling of the matter to the Catholic school boards – the very people who saw nothing wrong with their policies in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, two weeks after his statement, the girl’s request to start a Gay-Straight Alliance club was denied a second time. Her school board would use McGuinty’s speech in their justification for the ban in the statement they released to the public.

Amidst all of this, a reporter from the Toronto Star decided to take a look at Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in the Toronto region:

In a rare look inside four gay-straight alliances (GSAs), the Star found the focus is on fighting homophobia, especially the teen slur “That’s so gay” and the disclaimer “No homo!” many kids add when they compliment someone of the same sex, even on Facebook.

These are the quaint weekly lunch-time gatherings that the Ottawa Catholic School Board objects to and continues to ban. The inanity of their opposition is made more evident by the obvious positive nature of these gatherings.

Throughout this experience I’ve been asked some good questions which I felt I needed to address, and have done so below.

If the clubs changed their names and had a general focus, they would be allowed.

This view was expressed by the OCSB in their initial interview with the Ottawa Citizen, and I’ve heard it repeated many times since. I have a two part response to this. First, it makes no sense to undermine the targeted support of those who need it in order to appease those who would yield no benefit either way. Doing so would only negatively impact those who needed that support, and they do need that support. Let’s not forget that 51% of queer Canadian students reported verbal harassment at school because of their orientation, that 21% reported physical assaults, and that a full two-thirds did not feel safe at school. There’s no reason you couldn’t have both a group with a focus on general equality and a Gay-Straight Alliance. They are not mutually exclusive.

Second, when you say you have a problem with a title because it has the word “gay” in it, you’re saying you have a problem with the word “gay.” When you single that word out and ban its use in the context of identifying a group of individuals who self-identify as such, you’re stating that there’s something wrong with that self-identification. This negative message undermines anti-bullying efforts by the Catholic boards with regards to sexual minorities.

Finally, groups with a more general focus are not effective substitutes. As Dylan McKelvey, a grade 12 student, explains:

“Our school has an equity club which I joined, but even there, some students weren’t comfortable with me being gay,” said McKelvey, 18. “I still hear kids call out ‘faggot’ and ‘queer,’ so the GSA is a sanctuary. Having ‘gay’ in the name gives people something to relate to.”

Students are free to switch out of the Catholic school system.

So let’s set aside for a moment this idea that it is wrong to place the burden of change on those being discriminated against (the bullied), as opposed to those who support discriminatory policies (the bullies.)

It may be possible for some students to switch schools, but not all. In the end, there’s still going to be queer students in the provincially-funded schools, and marginalizing them because of the minority to which they belong will still be unacceptable.