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Toronto Catholic School Board Bows to Secularism

Commentary on inclusion of "sexual orientation" in Board's Workplace Harassment policy

By Fr. Alphonse de Valk, editor Catholic Insight magazine
From Oct. 2007 edition of Catholic Insight

TORONTO, October 4, 2007 (catholicinsight.com) - Just before Catholic Insight went to press with its September edition, on August 15 we learned that in May 2007, the Toronto District Catholic School Board (TCDSB), in its document Workplace Harassment, had moved to prohibit all teachers and staff from complaining or objecting to "same-sex partner status." It turns out that two other unacceptable prohibitions had previously been imposed already; namely "marital status" and "sexual orientation."

We sent e-mails to the board's 12 trustees, asking for an explanation, but by September 13, not a single reply had been received.

What does it all mean? The Catholic philosophy of education has always maintained that the teacher has to be an example and model of Catholic integrity. But the TCDSB, Canada's largest Catholic school board, tells us that teachers' personal lives - that is, whether they are divorced, have mistresses or live common-law - are purely private and of no one else's concern. Staff, parents, or anyone else may not object.

Just when this prohibition on the questioning of the marital status of teachers or staff was introduced into the document Workplace Harassment is not known to me. But, it appears to have been some time ago. It is directly contrary to the history of Catholic education in Canada.

Sometime later, the TCDSB must have decided that "sexual orientation" is also beyond discussion. Readers will remember that the term has never been defined, which is the reason parliamentarians discussing a proposed Charter of Rights in 1981 and 1982 refused to include it in Section 15 of the final document. However, that was changed by the Supreme Court in 1995, without discussion or the presentation of evidence.

As we explained in April, the Vatican never uses this term, again because of its double meaning. The Church uses the term "attraction." Sexual orientation, on the other hand, has been given the interpretation that GLBTTQ persons are born that way and that the condition is permanent - both incorrect notions.

Meanwhile, the scope of the term "sexual orientation" has steadily grown. First, it meant "gay" and lesbian. Then "bisexual" was added, making the acronym GLB. But it kept growing and today has broadened to GLBTTQ with the addition of "trans-gendered," "two-spirited" and "queer." A definition provided by the American Psychiatric Association lists 25 or more possible weird additions - all of them, by Christian standards, aberrations and perversions. But the TDCSB tells us these phenomena may not be questioned or opposed in its schools.

In May 2007, this board added a prohibition against questioning "same-sex partner status," the kind of questioning we had done in an April 2007 article about a teacher at Cardinal Carter Academy of the Arts in North York, ON.

The issue that arises from all this is: who has introduced these illegitimate and anti-Catholic prohibitions? As mentioned above, no answers have been forthcoming from the board itself.

Anyone familiar with school board meetings will know that they are dominated by the administration, not the trustees. The administration knows what it wants done and what it wants to avoid doing. On questions like this, lawyers are usually involved as well. Many lawyers today do not believe in God's law (natural law), only in the law of the land.

One can readily imagine getting legal advice saying that, as long as homosexuals do not openly proselytize, nothing can be done about them. But that is not acceptable to Catholics. When a person, who publicly presents him or herself as no longer adhering to Catholic standards of behaviour, steps before a class of children, he or she is proselytizing for a point of view opposed to Catholic teaching.

Today, then, the TCDSB prohibits all opposition to certain kinds of marital status, to sexual orientation (whatever that may mean 10 years from now) and, as we just learned, "same-sex partner status." This can only be understood in one way: the TDSCB rejects Catholic teaching on homosexuality and on the nature of the Catholic school. It therefore has betrayed Catholic parents, Catholic children, the Catholic community and, last but not least, the Catholic Church.

When lawyers say that there is nothing wrong with such an anti-harassment policy, it is because they themselves are hopelessly ignorant of what is going on in the world. Canada has witnessed 15 years or more of provincial human rights commissions punishing every and all opposition to the drive for legal and cultural equality, ranging from city mayors declining to celebrate gay pride days to numerous individuals who did no more than decline to co-operate. Such lawyers should be fired.

People keep asking: "What's wrong with same-sex 'marriage'? I don't see anything wicked in it!" The first effect of making so-called same-sex marriage legal and giving it "equality" with real marriage was the legal abolition of real marriage; i.e., the Judeo-Christian definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman. It no longer exists in Canadian law. The only definition in law that exists today is the one that suits homosexual activists.

The next consequence that follows from destroying the true understanding of marriage is the imposition of a false understanding. This is what we face now. That Catholics, and Catholic educators, are now also among those who succumb should, perhaps, no longer be a surprise.

See previous LifeSiteNews story with contact information for all trustees and Archbishop of Toronto:

Toronto Catholic School Board Pro-Gay Harassment Policy Threatens Priests
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07082903.html

Gay-Friendly Harassment Policy Approved by Toronto Catholic District School Board
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07081705.html

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