Queer Youth Speak Out

McGuinty and Harper making it worse for Queer kids
[ Queer Thoughts blog, December 5, 2011]

It's a crime. While Stephen Harper and his government are building prions to put pot smokers in jail, they are ignoring the plight of many young people in this country. While the Harper Government ramps up the new program to speak out for religious freedom around the world, the Ontario Liberal government is finding ways to allow systemic, may I say religious passive genocide against queer kids. They do that by allowing the Catholic Church to continue to teach gay is bad, that you gays can have a club, but it can not be called the Gay straight Alliance or the rainbow group or the queer Clan. Perhaps in McGuinty's world we can call it the FHnN, (Faggots have No Name").

Those are tough words. In polite society one would not say this. Can any of you say I am too hard in my views? Can you defend the endless numbers of attempted and unfortunately successful suicides due to bullying and perceived/understood homosexuality?

. . .

Globe Editorial: Catholic Schools' 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy bad for gay students
[ Globe & Mail, November 30, 2011]

Ontario has entered "don't ask, don't tell" territory. Gay students in its publicly funded Roman Catholic schools would be given the right - in law - to form gay-straight clubs or alliances. But not necessarily under that name.

The government has gone so timidly about doing the right thing that it has done the wrong thing. Its measure on gay-straight clubs is part of a new law on school bullying introduced on Wednesday. But its timidity is reminiscent of that of a bystander to bullying who - with a bit more moral courage - could put a stop to it.

The government argues that it is the support that matters, not the name. Up until now, Ontario's Catholic schools have blocked attempts at gay-straight alliances, saying that "equity clubs" can battle intolerance of all kinds, and that teens are too young to identify their sexual preference.

But the new support from the Ontario government goes only halfway. It is similar to president Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" law of 1993, now repealed, under which homosexuals were allowed in the U.S. military, as long as they didn't breathe a whisper of it. That put gay and lesbian soldiers in a terrible position - vulnerable to expulsion, and still treated as if they needed to hide who they are.

To be made nameless is not a small thing. It is to be told that some shame is associated with who you are. The clubs can exist but, depending on how the Catholic schools react, perhaps only in the closet, a place of shame.

The Catholic schools have the right to their beliefs about homosexuality. But they are public schools and they do not have the right to insist on a second-class status for students who identify as homosexual, or who simply have questions about their identity, or who have gay or lesbian parents. They need to try a little harder to make religious belief and equality work together.

This is not an abstract issue. It is difficult to be gay in high school, and gay teens suffer from depression, and depression is a factor in suicide. If Ontario truly wishes to defend those vulnerable to bullying, it should do so wholeheartedly. The best answer is to promote acceptance, and require it from those who refuse to give it.

— Globe Editorial

Globe Editorial: The rainbow and the word 'gay' should not be banned
[ Globe & Mail, September 2, 2011]

Aside from such obvious goals as imparting literacy and instilling an understanding of basic math, there is nothing more fundamental for publicly funded schools than to teach tolerance and respect. By forcing the removal of the word "gay" from gay-straight alliance clubs, and banning the rainbow flag associated with LGBT pride, some Catholic school administrators and trustees in Ontario are failing an important part of their educational mandate.

To censor the word "gay" and insist instead on generic "equity" clubs with a broad mandate to promote equity across the board, for women, racial minorities, and the variously challenged, as well as homosexuals, is an act of intolerance by some of Ontario's state-funded Catholic schools. Gay-straight alliance clubs are commonplace in the public school system. They are a direct, and welcome, response by students themselves to the bullying and prejudice that is often directed at young gays and lesbians.

In their mission statements, the Catholic school boards, such as Toronto's, profess a goal of creating a safe and welcoming learning environment. Yet some of them are hindering the purpose and success of groups whose sole purpose is to harbour understanding. What sort of lesson is that for their students? How does that contribute to a safe and welcoming learning environment?

The alliances are not promoting a homosexual agenda, as the Toronto board claims. A gay-straight alliance is an alliance between heterosexuals and homosexuals. They do not poach players from the "straight" team and they are not an assault on religious values. They are not a threat to the Church.

Whether a religion condones homosexuality or not, publicly funded schools have a duty to promote tolerance. St. Joseph's Catholic Secondary School, in Mississauga, should not be banning the rainbow flag or demanding the removal of "gay" in the alliance's title. Forbidding the flag has the effect of equating it to truly controversial banners such as the Confederate battle flag - which would be a ridiculous position. The last thing gay and lesbian students need is a school environment that has the effect of bullying them into silence.

— Globe Editorial

Condemnation by the United Nations should have been a wake-up call but
spineless, biased, homophobic politicans have effectively ignored it

On November 5, 1999 the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned Canada and Ontario for having violated the equality provisions (Article 26) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee restated its concerns on November 2, 2005, when it published its Concluding Observations regarding Canada's fifth periodic report under the Covenant. The Committee observed that Canada had failed to "adopt steps in order to eliminate discrimination on the basis of religion in the funding of schools in Ontario." [Wikipedia]

• Time to abolish separate Catholic school boards [this magazine, June 9, 2011]
• UN says funding of Catholic schools discriminatory [CBC, November 5, 1999]
• Ontario's Challenge: Denominational Rights in Public Education [Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, Issue #80, August 19, 2008]

The Sexual Believer: Uncommon Reflections on Sexual Morality For Catholics
In The Third Millenium by Noel Cooper [ NoelCooper.ca]

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered: A Call for Change in Catholic Teaching

        Homosexuality is a natural orientation for a minority of people in our world. Sexual activity flowing from that orientation is naturally good. Experiences that express mutual affirmation and support are good. Sexual relationships that develop on the basis of the same-sex partners' mutual attraction are good to the extent that they are honest, equal, responsible and enjoyable, rather than deceptive, oppressive, or irresponsible. Marriage and caring for children is as appropriate for same-sex couples as for heterosexual couples.

[Noel Cooper is a retired Religious Education Coordinator in a large GTA Catholic school board.]

For The Bible Tells Me So [forthebibletellsmeso.org]

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate?

Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families -- including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson -- we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard's Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

Globe Editorial: When making friends is against the rules
[ Globe & Mail, April 3, 2011]

A formal alliance of homosexual and heterosexual high-school students has become the club that dare not speak its name, in some of Canada's publicly funded Roman Catholic schools. The clubs are to be closeted within larger groups known as diversity or social-justice clubs. This is plain wrong, and destructive. It is an exercise in discrimination, and it is not made any more tolerable because it occurs in faith-based schools.

In Alberta, at least one gay-straight alliance exists in a Catholic school, and there are at least two in Saskatchewan Catholic schools, according to Kris Wells, a researcher with the University of Alberta's Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services. But they don't go by that name. They're called diversity clubs. And Mr. Wells refuses to reveal what schools or even what school boards have such alliances - an indication that it is not safe for "an alliance," by any name, to come out.

In Ontario, where some Catholic students have openly attempted to create gay-straight alliances, a principal insisted they could not, saying that it would encourage students to identify their sexuality at too young an age.

The Catholic schools are entitled to their sincerely held views on how sexuality develops. But without a doubt, students who identify themselves as gay in high school are at much higher risk for suicide than those who do not. They have traditionally been targets for bullying and ostracism. And here is a positive step against all that - a quintessentially Canadian, hardly radical step - an alliance.

An alliance implies acceptance, bridge-building, mutual understanding. Limiting the students' right to form an alliance is a blatant and quite extreme violation of freedom of assembly. That freedom, in this case, is about breaking out of one's isolation, an isolation that has harmed so many gay youth.

At its heart, the problem is that the Catholic school boards in question would like to believe that they are insulated from the individual rights protections in the Canadian Constitution; that, in effect, they are an equality-free zone. A religious-school permit is not a licence to discriminate - a point that political leaders, up to and including provincial premiers, need to communicate.

— Globe Editorial

Big Bullies: How the Religious Right is Trying to Make Schools Safe for Bullies and
Dangerous for Gay Kids [Right Wing Watch]

Students deserve an education that is free from bullying and harassment, and in many districts parents, teachers, principals, community members and students are working together to create a safe and welcoming environment for all children. Bullying can impede learning and ruin lives. As Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said, "bullying is doubly dangerous because if left unattended it can rapidly escalate into even more serious violence and abuse." Close to nine in ten Americans believe that bullying is a "serious problem," and many communities are directly challenging harassment and violence in schools.

However, many Religious Right activists want to derail efforts to combat bullying. An increasing number of conservative leaders and organizations have fiercely opposed anti-bullying programs developed by schools and education groups for the sole reason that such programs identify and attempt to combat the widespread bullying of LGBT youth.

Rather than recognize and address the problem of bullying against students who are gay or perceived to be gay, Religious Right groups want schools to embrace a policy of inaction. Many resort to repeating discredited lies about sexual orientation and vilifying the LGBT community and its allies to back up their opposition to anti-bullying programs that mention anti-gay bullying. Concerned students, families, teachers, education professionals, and public officials should not be fooled by the far-right's attempt to smear anti-bullying programs, and should instead ensure that schools address bullying with a direct, honest and comprehensive approach.

[Continued here] (as a *.pdf file)