It's Time to Stand Up Against Publicly-Funded Bigotry
"Occasionally, there comes a time when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy."
I believe that every child should be afforded the opportunity to learn in an open, inclusive, and accepting environment.
I also believe that in a truly public education system, tax-payer’s dollars should not be going to individuals, institutions or organizations that breed or promote intolerance.
For those two reasons, and so many more, I need to once again bring to the forefront an ongoing issue currently taking place in Toronto’s school system.
Father Jeremiah Attaalla of the Ti Agia Maria and St. Demiana the Martyr Coptic Orthodox Church has gone public and admitted that his congregation is upset at the Toronto Catholic District School Board’s (TCDSB) proposed inclusionary measures. At the core of Father Attaalla’s concerns is the probability that the TCDSB will put in place measures which will anchor anti-homophobic efforts into its equity policy.
If the TCDSB indeed passes this measure, he is threatening to have more than 4,000 students removed from the Catholic school system in Toronto, potentially posing a net loss of over $40 million to the TCDSB.
His rationale?
“In these young grades, we don’t want teachers talking about God creating Adam and Steve... it’s Adam and Eve.”
I am no cleric, nor do I have any authourity to speak for God, but I do believe that Father Attaalla and those of his ilk are exactly what is wrong with our society: individuals with influence and power cultivating inequality and division in the name of blind faith.
A just society requires the constant ability for all of us to challenge and ask questions of our institutions and traditions, especially those that attempt to censor or regulate our thinking.
What Father Attaalla wants to create is an education system that knowingly pits one child against another. It is a system that unapologetically uses religious creed to decide whether or not a child is worthy of equality. There is nothing noble or Christian about what he is defending.
This is not a Catholic school board problem. This is not a government problem. This is a human rights problem and progressives everywhere need to speak out and counter this sort of injustice.
To Father Attaalla and to any other individual who subscribes to the same ideal, I say this: if homosexuality is against the teachings of your holy book, then publicly-funded bigotry is against the laws of this land.
If you want to indoctrinate your children and advance a way of thinking that is fundamentally discriminatory, it should not be done with the public purse.
Ideally, the way forward is to have a cohesion of beliefs and customs present in our public institutions. But when a church leader publicly denounces principles that are integral to our Canadian democracy (such as pluralism and fairness), we, as a community, need to stand our ground.