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'Facts, not ideology, determine reality,' says Calgary Bishop Fred Henry.

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CALGARY, Alberta, June 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Calgary’s Catholic Bishop Fred Henry has more than doubled down on his accusation of totalitarianism against Alberta’s New Democratic government for its promotion of gender ideology in the province’s schools.

He’s quadrupled down with his fourth message to the diocese in recent months explaining how contrary to Catholic teaching—and so how unfit for the province’s (taxpayer-funded) Catholic schools—is the NDP’s newfound promotion of transgenderism in school, locker room, and washroom.

In Henry’s latest message, “Totalitarianism in Alberta IV,” he displays the same eloquent unwillingness to bend his knee before secularists already demonstrated in fights with the provincial human rights commission over homosexuality, and the public health establishment over HPV vaccinations.

Taking as his starting point last month’s rallies against the government’s controversial gender guidelines for schools and equally contentious promotion of homosexuality there, Henry writes, “The issues are not just about bathrooms, plumbing and urination, parental rights, safety of children, how people feel, GSAs [gay-straight alliances] and an imperfect Bill 10. What is at stake is the very order of creation.”

Bishop Henry states that the premise behind the government’s guidelines, that “self-identification is the sole measure of an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression” is an assumption without any evidence.

“Such subjectivity,” he continues, “is ever expansive and morally problematic. LGBT has now swelled to LGBTTQQIAAP2S. The two Ts stand for transgender and transsexual and the double Qs represent both ‘queer’ and ‘questioning.’ The I is for intersex; the twin As for ‘asexual’ and ‘ally’—the latter meaning you’re hetero but down with the cause. P is for pansexual, the catch-all for being up for pretty much anything depending on the situation. The newest addition is the ‘2S’ which denotes being two-spirited, a term used for one who does not fit into the male/female binary.”

Declaring that “facts, not ideology, determine reality,” Henry delivers a cold dash of realism by quoting from a recent declaration from the American College of Pediatricians to remind Albertans that “Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: ‘XY’ and ‘XX’ are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species.”

If “heterosexuality” is normal and the biology behind it is natural, then what is the New Democratic government’s treasured gender fluidity? It is, according to the College of Pediatricians, “at best, a sign of confused thinking.” In an individual child, it is a “mental disorder” that deserves treatment, not, as the NDP government would have it, a form of self expression that school systems and individual teachers are bound to support and to conceal from parents.

Henry notes that the College’s expression of current, non-ideological science  “meshes perfectly with biblical and theological truths.” He quotes Jesus Christ:  “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?” Then he quotes Pope Francis, who, he writes, “has not minced his words: ‘the gender ideology is demonic.’ He [Pope Francis] includes gender theory among the fundamental dangers of our era, with the same threatening potential as nuclear weapons and gene manipulation and describes it as an attitude with which man creates a new sin that is directed against God the Creator.”

The target of Bishop Henry’s four letters (so far) is Bill 10, which last year amended the School Act to require all schools to set up gay-straight alliances when a single student in a school requests it, and the “Guidelines for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments that respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions.” These require school authorities to let students use the washrooms and change rooms, and join the teams and clubs of the gender they identify with at the moment.

“It’s great that he’s standing up for Catholic schools,” said Donna Trimble, head of the Parents for Choice in Education, a leading protest group against Bill 10 and the gender guidelines. “I just wish other school leaders would do the same for their parents and students.”

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