Ontario MPPs Pass Anti-Bullying Bill

Over objections of Ontario’s publicly-funded Catholic schools.

The Ontario legislature has passed Bill 13 — a bill mandating that students be allowed to form Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in public and Catholic schools.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday he is convinced his government’s anti-bullying legislation will become accepted in all schools, despite concerns raised by Catholic educators.

“There are values that transcend any one faith,” McGuinty said. “And if you talk to parents, they’ll tell you. They want their kids to be respected and accepted, they want their schools to be caring places, ideally we’d like to see them as a bit of an extension of the home in terms of the comfort level that our kids might enjoy inside their school.”

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Ontario Catholic school trustees had asked politicians not to pass the amendment to Bill 13 that strips them of the power to prevent students from calling their anti-homophobia clubs GSAs.

Cardinal Thomas Collins, the Archbishop of Toronto, has said the GSA movement in the U.S. conflicts with Catholic beliefs.

Campaign Life Coalition, which has rejected Bill 13, claiming it is the government’s backdoor attempt to implement its controversial sex education curriculum, called on all Catholic ratepayers to encourage their school boards to invoke Section 93, which provides constitutional protection for their religious beliefs in education.

“Dalton McGuinty and those MPPs who voted in favour of this legislation have declared war against faith communities and made all Canadians vulnerable,” Mary Ellen Douglas, the group’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. “They’ve now set a precedent which all Canadians should find alarming. The state interference in Catholic and public schools takes away fundamental rights and puts all Canadians at risk.”

Sorry, Ontario Catholic schools and their supporters; I have no sympathy.  Your lack of support for other faith communities, in the original John Tory initiative in the 2007 provincial election to extend funding to them (before he pussied out and backed down, losing my support and vote in the process), meant that instead of all parents having the option to have their tax dollars spent on religious education for their children – and thus being able to band together on issues like this, to argue for the rights of all believers not to have secularist dogma imposed on their educational systems – you retain your unique, unfairly privileged position of having your education publicly funded, just like the secularist public schools.  And whose bread you eat, their song you sing.  Suck it.  If you want my support, back equal funding for other religious education, too.  Otherwise, while I certainly object to what McGuinty has done, I’m not going to go to bat for you and yours, with your unfairly privileged position.  Bite me.

While I’m on the subject, when is the Catholic Church going to deny the Sacraments to its erring ostensible son, Dalton McGuinty?  Oh, that’s right; round about the time when they do likewise across the board to all pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, pro-euthanasia, ostensibly Catholic politicians at all levels, in Canada, America, and the rest of the world.  In other words, never.  Gutless as ever, as even honourable folks amongst your own people recognize…