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The Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association marches in Toronto's 2014 Pride parade.

OTTAWA, November 28, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The Ottawa branch of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) helped pay for a union event marking this past summer’s Gay Pride Week and parade with a cruise on the Rideau River.

The Catholic Intelligence blog discovered the latest evidence of OECTA's active promotion of the LGBT agenda. The event listing appears on a Facebook posting by the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, advising those interested in joining the third annual “CCGSD Labour Unions Boat Cruise” how to “Get Your Free Tickets Now.”

Tickets are free, the event page says, “thanks to our union sponsors (NUPGE, OC-ETFO, OECTA-Ottawa, and ATU-279.)” OECTA-Ottawa is an acronym for the Ottawa branch of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association.

The OECTA provincial leadership’s support for Toronto’s annual Gay Pride Parade is well established. Members have marched in the parade since 2014 despite the opposition of several Catholic school boards, a Catholic parents group, several bishops and Cardinal Thomas Collins, the archbishop of Toronto.

Their defiance led Cardinal Collins to decry the “inadequate and mistaken understanding of their faith” and dismiss them as a mere labor union.

LifeSiteNews reported in 2014 that “though it’s often billed as ‘family friendly,’ Toronto Pride is known for its displays of full frontal nudity, simulated sex acts, sadomasochism, and sexual bondage.”

But OECTA’s then-president James Ryan defended the action as one based on the teachers’ solidarity — against bullying — with their LGBT students and colleagues, and claimed it did not imply support for any indecency. The union’s AGM resolved to join the parade because “registering for, and marching in, the World Pride Parade is a visible symbol of solidarity with one of the most marginalized groups in the Catholic community.”

Jack Fonseca of the Campaign Life Coalition called for the Catholic bishops “to strip OECTA of the name Catholic ASAP. They also need to find a way to either give OECTA the boot, or otherwise restrict their activity very narrowly to contract negotiation. … The cost of doing nothing will be the potential loss of many souls who will be lead to reject Christian truth because of OECTA’s influence.”

The Catholic Intelligence blogger took it one step further: “Get your children away from OECTA and ‘catholic’ teachers!”

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– Toronto Cardinal on OECTA at WorldPride: ‘What are you thinking?’