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.
Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky (Flickr)
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.
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.
For all those of you who have been following me for a while, I apologize that the focus of my blog has become all about LGBT issues. I talk about what I’m interested in, and right now it has to do with these problems.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been campaigning to lift the ban on Gay-Straight Alliance clubs (GSAs) by the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB). For those of you who aren’t aware of what GSAs are, I’ll refer you to the definition provided by Ontario’s Ministry of Education:
Gay/Straight Alliances are student-run and teacher-supported school-based groups that work to create safe, caring, and inclusive spaces for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-identified, and two-spirited students and their allies in schools.
They’re essentially safe spaces where LGBT youth and their allies can get together and talk, and are cited over and over by the Ministry of Education as a means to make schools safer. However, due to the homophobic views of the Catholic hierarchy here in Ontario, they have been banned from Ontarian Catholic schools. In fact, according to the weekly paper Xtra!, not a single Catholic school here in Ontario has one of these clubs.
It was my original expectation that the journalists would do their job and expose these policies, which the politicians would then jump on and pressure to remove. That would not turn out to be the case. When a journalist interviewed an official from the Ottawa Catholic School Board, the representative managed to spin their ban as a move for social justice and equity. The journalist didn’t question the contradiction. I wrote about that here. Politicians, meanwhile have kept silent. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, our province’s leaders have no interest in getting involved.
Disappointed with how things were turning out, I decided to jump into the fray. I started a website and petition. I designed a poster, which I put all over town. A reporter called me to do an interview with the Orleans Star.
Poster distributed around Ottawa.
From the article that resulted from that interview, it was clear that I had underestimated the representatives of the Ottawa Catholic School Board. When asked for their version of events by the reporter, they painted my whole effort as the result of a misunderstanding. They stated that they didn’t have a ban:
“We’re aware of Mr. McArdle’s petition, and the petition is asking for a retraction of something we don’t currently have,” she said. “We don’t have a ban on gay-straight alliances, nor do we have a policy banning gay-straight alliances.”
This can be true depending on which definition of “ban” you’re going for. By the OCSB’s definition, a ban is only a ban if it is spelt out in black and white for all to see like it was in Halton. By my definition, a ban is in place if the school board prohibits those clubs on their grounds, regardless of how it is justified. The journalist in the Orleans Star hinted at this when she asked the official whether a student could in fact then start a GSA in an Ottawa Catholic school, and the answer wasn’t a “yes.” When she asked another official if there was any GSAs in Ottawa, the answer was a no.
“No, I wouldn’t say we ban them. We support student clubs that support inclusiveness, especially for students who might otherwise feel marginalized. But all our clubs must, however, adhere to the Catholic teachings and values,” says [superintendent of education for the Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board Gerald Casey]. Could students at a Bruce Grey Catholic school start a GSA? “The answer would be no,” admits Casey.
So again, the board official said that they didn’t ban the clubs – but stated that a student would not be allowed to start them. I don’t draw a distinction between a ban and banning something. These officials do. Because they do, it makes it possible for them to deny the very things they are doing, and by that virtue, escape the criticism that would come with any admission. How they can continue to state such contradictory remarks and not be called on them by journalists or politicians is really something I have a hard time comprehending.
Another tactic used by Catholic school boards, including what was used on me in my brief discussions with the OCSB, was to cite the fact that they have anti-bullying campaigns that target homophobia. They use this as an example to prove that they don’t marginalize gay students, and in fact welcome them. While I maintain that these efforts are very positive, their presence doesn’t negate the discriminatory policies of the school board.
Nevertheless, this seemingly conflicting stance on its queer youth does tend to confound observers. To understand how an institution could promote an end to homophobic bullying while still engaging in activities that others might perceive as bullying, you must understand the Catholic view of homosexuality itself.
Within the Catholic hierarchy here in Ontario, there is this view that being a sexual minority is acceptable, but that exhibiting any homosexual behaviour is not. Love the sinner, hate the sin. To quote the guidelines issued to all Ontario Catholic schools by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario:
An irreversible homosexual orientation is not sinful, since it is not sought by homosexual persons. A tendency, desire or inclination are not choices and are therefore not wrong in themselves. There is a real difference between sexual desire and the decision to act on it. The Church makes a critical distinction between orientation, and conduct or behaviour.
And it goes on:
The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial.
And on:
Thus, romantic behaviour between homosexual persons is morally unacceptable, because it points toward future sexual relationships that are non-marital.
And on:
While the Church respects an individual who has done his or her best to come to a correct moral judgment, it is not obligated to accommodate a decision based on an individual’s erroneous conscience. This includes a student who blamelessly arrives at the mistaken conclusion that homosexual acts can be morally good.
This is why the Ottawa Catholic School Board has anti-bullying programs: because it protects the person (sinner), without promoting homosexuality itself (sin). It is also for this very reason that clubs like Gay-Straight Alliances are prohibited. These clubs, by their nature of being a support group for students, might make the students realize that it’s okay to be gay. That there is something intrinsically wrong with being told that you should never be allowed to fall in love with someone, to marry them, to have children with them, and to grow old with them.
The OCSB draws a line where none exists. From it’s perspective, it isn’t marginalizing students. By the measure of every person who doesn’t view homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered”, they are. These students are being denied a support group purely because of the fact that they belong to a minority to which the Church is opposed.
This is not right and I will continue to confront the Ottawa Catholic School Board for as long as they continue to discriminate against the youth under their care. They can accuse me of misunderstanding all they want, but there is only one rebuke that will satisfy me: when a Gay-Straight Alliance is finally allowed to exist in an Ottawa Catholic school.
This was originally an update to my previous post about homophobia in Halton, but I got pissed off enough that I thought it warranted it’s own post. The Ottawa Catholic School Board is just as homophobic, but they learned from Halton’s public relations disaster. They learned how to spin their anti-LGBT actions as equity and justice.
Officials for the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) were interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen last week. According to Tom D’Amico, a superintendent for the Ottawa Catholic School Board, Gay-Straight Alliance clubs are banned in his schools as well. The reasoning, to quote the Citizen:
Here in Ottawa, D’Amico said the English Catholic school board doesn’t use the name “gay-straight alliance” 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.
They Assembly of Ontario Bishops, which the school turns to for spiritual guidance, has this to say about gay students:
Teachers must consult the following: Section 2357 and 2358 (always together) of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 2357 reads:
…tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
This is a brilliant marketing spin. It’s an anti-gay policy, under the guise of… equity and justice? Simple rhetorical question: are Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs allowed? No. Would the same club be under a different name? Not if we’re to believe D’Amico. The Board wants something with a different focus.
It seems they would approve clubs with a broader scope if it meant that LGBT students and the issues they have are marginalized. Heaven forbid there’d be a club in the Ottawa Catholic schools that’s specifically there to provide a safe space for queer students and their allies to discuss. Tom D’Amico noted:
“A student who is openly gay in our schools, we want all of our students and staff to accept (them) … We don’t want to see them marginalized in any manner.”
That reminded me of a quote by Michael Pautler, of the gay-students-are-lesser-beings Halton Catholic District School Board:
“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.”
Seems like we have a different definition of what it is to be marginalized. Would the Ottawa Catholic School Board outright ban chess clubs or clubs for anime fans, citing that their focus wasn’t “general” enough? I don’t think so.
I digress. The OCSB has the same policy as Halton, but the former had a much better public relations campaign. It doesn’t change the fact that both school boards are led by those who marginalize and actively seek to undermine students on a basis of gender orientation and identity.
