Says all religious schools must bow to Human Rights Code on “same sex partnership status”
TORONTO, July 4, 2002 (LSN.ca) – At a press conference today, Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Keith Norton took direct aim at religious schooling. The Canadian Press reports that Norton, said he was deeply troubled by the lack of any regulatory requirement for private schools to comply with the provincial human-rights code. Singling out publicly funded Catholic education and the proposed Ontario private school tax credit, Norton said, “If public funds are to be used in any way, directly or indirectly, to fund such schools, there ought to be some accountability and some scrutiny.” Norton, and the commission regard Catholic teaching against homosexual partnerships as violating the human rights code. Norton’s year-end report issued today noted that this year the Commission “released an updated edition of Teaching Human Rights in Ontario, a package for secondary school teachers to use when explaining human rights issues to students” which “includes the 1999 amendment to the Ontario Human Rights Code, which added “same sex partnership status” as a protected ground.” In his statements to the press, Norton made it clear that code-imposed restrictions on religious education must be in place despite the desire of parents. “The risk may be, in some instances, that the parents may be supportive of what’s going on but it may not be in the public interest,” he said. Norton is an open homosexual activist and was appointed to his position by the Harris Conservatives. Norton recently publicly suggested an Ontario Catholic school student demanding that he be allowed to bring his homosexual boyfriend to the school prom would very likely win his case before a human rights tribunal.
See the Canadian Press coverage: https://www.canoe.ca/OntQueTicker/CANOE-wire.Ont-Human-Rights.html See the Commission’s year-end report: https://www.ohrc.on.ca/english/publications/year-end-report-2001-2002.pdf