TORONTO, September 21, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a first for Canada, a group of volunteers has set up a fund to help defray the legal costs of parents who, fed up with government and school board policies aimed at eradicating all traces of Judeo-Christian morality from the education system, are willing to launch lawsuits to defend their parental rights to be the primary moral educators of their children.
“Recognizing that average families don’t have $100,000 sitting around to pay for lawsuits, we’ve started this defense fund to provide financial assistance to families whose parental rights have been violated,” Lou Iacobelli, member of the board of directors and spokesperson for The Parental Rights in Education Defense Fund (PREDF), told LifeSiteNews.
“To succeed though, we need people of faith to do their part by donating what they can to make this strategy a reality.”
The Fund was created to help parents fight back, in the courts, against what its founders call a “belligerent government ideology” bent on “indoctrinating children in the classroom with philosophies that undermine the religious beliefs of their parents.”
The founders argue on the Fund’s website that Canada has reached a “tipping point” and that without “immediate intervention, parental rights to direct the moral education of their own children will be lost in several respects.”
The Board of Directors of the newly established fund say they believe the time for attempts to correct this situation by political means alone has passed, and legal action is now necessary.
“The only viable way to pull Canada back from this tipping point is for parents and other stakeholders to fight back in the courts. That means lawsuits.”
Examples of the governmental agenda of indoctrination are many, but the PREDF points out situations in Quebec and Ontario as characteristic of what they say is the suppression of religious freedom and conscience rights that is happening across the country.
“Quebec’s Ministry of Education is forcing all students in the province, whether in private or public school, to take a mandatory course in ‘moral relativism’, euphemistically named Ethics and Religious Culture. It teaches for instance, that all religions and ethical choices are equal,” state’s the Fund’s website.
The site points out that a Quebec Superior Court Decision ruled that the government was “totalitarian” in the way that it imposed the course, without any right for parents or schools to opt out.
In Ontario, “Premier Dalton McGuinty has rolled out implementation of his gay equity policy for the 2011 school year. The policy targets both Catholic and public schools and uses the classroom as a vehicle to indoctrinate students into acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle.
“This represents an unconstitutional abuse of power, using state-sponsored propaganda to subvert parents’ rights over the moral education of their own kids,” says the Fund, continuing, “Dalton McGuinty also admitted at Toronto’s 2011 gay pride parade, that his government is aiming to change ‘attitudes’ on homosexuality, a process he says ‘should begin in the home’.”
The PREDF is currently providing financial assistance to parents in Toronto and Hamilton initiating lawsuits against two different school boards over what the parents argue is the unconstitutional suppression of religious freedom and conscience rights. These lawsuits seek to entrench a guaranteed right for all parents in Ontario to withdraw their children from lessons that violate their religious beliefs.
The group notes that requests for assistance in other school board jurisdictions across Canada will be assessed based on the merits of the application and the fund’s financial resources.
Assistance may also be extended to students and teachers asserting legal claims.
Information on the Parental Rights in Education Defense Fund is available on the group’s website.
Contact Info:
The Parental Rights in Education Defense Fund
31 Adelaide Street E.,
P.O. Box 1108,
Toronto, ON, M5C 2K6
Phone: 647.258.4845
Toll Free: 877.811.2713