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B.C. Gay Couple Seeks Mandatory Homosexual School Curriculum Without Parental Opt-Out

VANCOUVER, B.C. July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is preparing to hear what pro-family and religious groups are calling a truly frightening case. Murray and Peter Corren, a B.C. gay couple, filed a complaint against the B.C. Ministry of education in 1999 alleging that the Ministry’s curriculum didn’t adequately “address issues of sexual orientation.” That case is slated to be heard beginning today.

“Basically, there is systemic discrimination through omission and suppression of queer issues in the whole of the curriculum,” alleges Murray Corren, who is an elementary school teacher in Port Coquitlam.

What many are finding deeply disturbing, however, is that the Corren’s are not only seeking inclusion of explicitly homosexual material in the curriculum, promoting homosexuality as a normative and safe lifestyle option, but also that they wish to ensure that the material is mandatory.

If successful, the case will ensure that parents do not retain the right to choose to pull their children from the offensive portion of the curriculum and provide yet another extraordinary exception from normal rules because it has been insisted upon by gay activists. Homosexual activists have won exceptions from laws regarding public nudity, sexual solicitation, public sex acts, group sex in their so-called "bath houses", normal medical safeguards to contain the transmission of dangerous communicable diseases, the posting of sexually explicit billboards and much more.

The gay couple’s legal council, Tim Timberg, said, “The second issue is there’s an opting-out provision in the curriculum that where a subject is deemed to be sensitive, the school teachers are under an obligation to in advance advise parents that they’ll be raising a sensitive issue in the classroom.” The Human Rights Complaint seeks to remove sexual orientation from the list of ‘sensitive’ issues.

“If we are going to be providing and promoting curriculum that treats homosexuality as just a normal thing that’s really no different than heterosexuality, we will be trampling on the religious freedoms of thousands of British Columbia families,” said Derek Rogusky, vice-president of family policy at Focus on the Family.

“Already what the schools are teaching and what’s going on in the schools are often in opposition to what parents are teaching at home and what they hold up as the ideal,” he said, “and this will just further that.”

Although the complaint was filed in 1999, the recent passing of Bill C-38 in the Canadian Parliament greatly increases the likelihood that the disturbing case will receive the ear of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

JJ

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