Catastrophic Catechism

Photo credit: jgraham

Here we go again.

Ontario is trying to create new anti-bullying laws that will attempt to prevent bullying in the province's public schools. Such a move should be welcomed, supported, and applauded by almost everyone; very few people believe that bullying is a good thing or that nothing should be done to prevent it.

But it should come as no surprise that religious fundamentalists do not like the new law. Why don't they like it? Simple: the new law includes strategies for dealing with issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. As these students receive additional bullying that other students don't have to deal with, it only makes sense to provide specific help for these students. But these right-wing religious groups object to anything that paints LGBT individuals in a positive light. They also object to the fact that the provincial government is requiring that all of Ontario's public Catholic schools have gay-straight alliances. Of course, the provincial government is only taking matters into its own hands because the province's publicly funded Catholic schools were ignoring LGBT issues in their schools.


What exactly are these fundamentalists saying? Take a look:

“When you are forcing teachers, Christian teachers, Jewish teachers, Muslim teachers to teach things that are contrary to the values that they hold, to teach that there are six genders and that you are not attached to the gender of your anatomy … that may be an offence to many Ontarians.” -- Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College in Toronto

“This legislation proposes that children be indoctrinated to reject their parents’ faith and their parents’ family values, and that’s an affront.”  -- Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of Chabad Flamingo Synagogue in Toronto.

“The anti-bullying legislation that Mr. McGuinty is proposing constitutes a violation of our religious freedoms that are guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and further to that, it violates the common law of separation of church and state.” -- Rondo Thomas of the Evangelical Association

McVety and others of his ilk are, ironically, claiming that the new law is discriminatory and will "indoctrinate" the children of religious parents. But the only thing that the law is discriminatory against is discrimination, and the only "indoctrinating" it does is to reverse religious indoctrination that infringes on the rights of LGBT students. I don't think I even have to address the ridiculous assertion regarding the separation of church and state. This is just another case of religious people using their religion as a trump card to try to get their way.

To his credit, Premier Dalton McGuinty -- who is Catholic -- is refusing to back down on this issue. Good for him. If only he had done the same when he was trying to institute his new sex-education curriculum (you'll notice a familiar name in that article). But the big problem is that there are still publicly funded Catholic schools in Ontario.

Publicly funded Catholic school are wrong. No other religious schools receive public funding in Ontario, so why are Catholic schools shown preferential treatment? Yes, the right to publicly funded Catholic schools is in the Constitution, but Quebec and Newfoundland have changed it to correct the situation. Ontario should do the same. Even the UN agrees.

And actually, it's in the best interests of even Catholics to remove public funding from Catholic schools. The publicly funded Catholic schools are a watered down version of Catholicism that "true Catholics" don't even like. This is evidenced by these hardline Catholics accusing McGuinty of being "not a great Catholic" for trying to get this law passed. Making Catholic schools private institutions would allow them to be as bigoted and discriminatory as their ridiculous doctrines require them to be. Then the only problem would be that private Catholic schools -- like Churches and other religious organizations -- are still allowed to be discriminatory, but that's another issue altogether.