All Posts Tagged With: "gay-straight alliance"
Don’t say ‘GSA’
Ontario Catholic schools will create anti-bullying clubs that definitely won’t be called ‘gay-straight alliances’
Let’s embark upon a little thought experiment, shall we? Suppose Johnny B. Seventh-Grader is being bullied mercilessly for his fiery red hair. “Ginger!” the kids call him. “Freak of nature!” they say. “You have no soul!” And so forth. Johnny, feeling ostracized and alone, looks to his school’s administration for support. Naturally, one would assume, resources would be available for our redheaded friend. After all, the school—a public institution—is part of a society where reds have the right to live freely from discrimination. Redheaded people can work in Canada, they can own property, they can vote, hell—they can even marry! So the school, you would expect, would be compelled to foster an environment of inclusion. Johnny’s principal hears his plight, and, in an effort to change the culture of taboo brewing around redheads, she creates a school club called, “It’s OK to be R**.” What’s wrong, Johnny? Don’t you feel more accepted?
The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association (OCSTA) is doing the same sort of semantic dance when it comes to naming its new anti-bullying groups, created in response to requests for gay-straight alliances in Catholic schools. A reporter from Xtra, a national gay and lesbian newspaper, spoke with OCSTA president Nancy Kirby, who told her the new groups will not be called gay-straight alliances:
“When I look at a gay-straight alliance, I see an activist group,” [Kirby said]. We are answering the students’ request for support and assistance, not for activism. Students don’t want to become activists; they want to be supported in being bullied by their peers.”
Is standing up against anti-gay bullying not activism? “In some ways it could be and in other ways it isn’t,” she says. The groups will all have a “common name.”
That’s right—no activism allowed! On a side note, Kirby should probably look into St. Joseph Secondary School, where a lot of this GSA talk originated, because the school apparently has a Solidarity Action Committee “committed to creating a just world by working for peace, fairness and equality everywhere.” Sounds like trouble to me…
According to the Xtra article, students at St Joseph Catholic Secondary School chose the name “Rainbow Alliance” for their club, but the school principal rejected the suggestion, allegedly telling student Leanne Iskander that the name was “too LGBT-sounding.” In related news, word has not yet been confirmed on rumours of whether the school will, in fact, change the name of the cartons of “homogenized milk” sold in the school’s cafeteria.
If the administration’s aim was really to create a safe, inclusive environment for gay and lesbian youth at its schools, it would have no qualms with having “gay words” in the title of the anti-bullying club. Its wavering, however, suggests otherwise. Just another reason why the public dollar should not be supporting a system that puts religious doctrine before students welfare. And oh yeah: down with Gingers.
Defund Ontario’s Catholic schools
Latest flip-flop by Halton trustees shows they’re not in it for the students
The Halton Catholic District School Board has overturned its ban on gay-straight alliances—and yes, it was probably something you said. The board was subject to international ire after its decision to ban gay-straight alliances caught the media’s attention earlier this month. Rubbing salt in the already-festering wounds, board director Alice Anne Lemay decided to draw an unwise parallel to Nazism while defending the board’s decision. “We don’t have Nazi groups either,” she said to Xtra, Canada’s gay and lesbian newspaper. “It’s not in accordance with the teachings of the church. If they wanted to have a club outside of school, fine, just not in school.”
Well, it turned out people didn’t take to that analogy too well, nor did they accept the exclusionary rhetoric implied by the decision. So, unsurprisingly, the board met Tuesday night and voted 6-2 in favour of scrapping the ban on gay-straight alliances. Michael Pautler, Director of Education for the Halton Catholic District School Board, reflected on the decision in a statement released by the board. “The most compelling voices on this issue have come from some of the students in our care,” he said.
It would be silly to buy that explanation, of course. When local MPPs, pundits across the nation, and even celebrity blogger Perez Hilton chastises the board for its obstructive and prejudicial decision, it’s hard to believe board members when they proclaim that they suddenly and spontaneously decided to listen to their students after all. The controversy tarnished the board’s reputation and promoted the impression that its interests lie with the Catholic Church, not with the social wellbeing of its students. When that allegiance is so blaringly apparent, it becomes all the more outrageous that public dollars are still fueling Catholic school boards in Ontario.
It’s not just this unfortunate blemish that highlights the incongruity involved with publicly funding Catholic schools (though “Public Pays School to Discriminate Against Own Students” is an awesome headline). Some Catholic schools across the province still refuse to teach methods of birth control and STI prevention (even though it’s part of Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum) leaving it up to their students to educate themselves on preventing pregnancy and sexual diseases. Creationism is still taught alongside evolution (albeit, supposedly only in religion class), and the hiring practices invoked by some Catholic boards could, arguably, be called discriminatory. Make no mistake–churches and religious schools have every right to conduct themselves in any manner they see fit, but they should not be entitled to the public dime, especially when their methods and philosophies are so subjective.
Catholic schools’ exclusive privilege to public dollars is unjust. Ontario needs to follow Quebec and Newfoundland and move to invest wholly in secular education, tailored to all students regardless of religious background. This Halton scandal shows why funding schools concerned with following the teachings of the church, and not necessarily the interests of its students, should come to an end.
