The Coptic Orthodox Church has threatened to somehow withdraw 5000 schoolchildren from the Toronto Catholic District School Board unless the board scraps its plans to implement the government’s required tolerance and anti-homophobia policies.

Jeremiah Attaalla, a spokesperson for the sect, explained the bizarre hostage tactics to the press. ”In these young grades, we don’t want teachers talking about God creating Adam and Steve; it’s Adam and Eve.”

A gross mischaracterization and a cliché all rolled into one. Impressive!

Indeed, schools adhereing to the new equity policy will not be “teaching homosexuality” as Attalla fears, since inherent traits like that can’t be taught or learned. Rather it’s about improving student life through programs proven to reduce bullying, such as gay-straight alliances.

Of course, Attaalla isn’t pleased about this prospect either. “Our members do not want gay-straight alliance groups in our Catholic schools,” he said. A strangely un-Catholic stance, since these programs have demonstrated a reduction in student distress, physical violence, and suicide.

Thankfully, it’s tough luck for Attaalla, because the Ontario government recently clarified that all decisions regarding whether or not to form LGBT support groups in publicly-funded schools rests solely with the students. The same students that he presumes to speak for.

Of course, there is another option. “We are a rich church,” Attaala continued, “so we’ll fund a new school if we have to.”

• Coptic Catholics threaten to withdraw students over gay policy [Parent Central]
• Church threatens to pull children from Catholic schools [Xtra]

Great news! Thanks to pressure from students, the Ontario government has announced that all schools receiving public funding, including Catholic schools, must allow GLBT support groups starting this September.

“The choice to have an LGBTQ group will be the choice of students, not the choice of principals and school boards,” MPP Glen Murray announced to the press on Friday. “If the students want to have a specifically dedicated group to supporting gay and lesbian and transgendered youth, they will have one.”

GLBT support groups, such as Gay-Straight Alliances, have a proven track record of improving student safety, but Catholic schools have been fighting their formation for years. What started off as a blanket ban (a strategy that became increasingly difficult to justify as evidence of these groups’ benefits became clear), eventually turned into a kind of hijacking by Catholic administrations. Whenever a group was requested by students, it would instead be directed into strange, generic support group. Such groups would be identified as promoting diversity and being all-inclusive, but whenever issues facing gay students were brought up, discussion was halted by administration for not being “inclusive” enough—focusing on a specific segment of the student population.

With Friday’s announcement, the Ontario government has made it clear that students will get exactly the kind of peer support they need, and that the Catholic boards’ nonsense will no longer be tolerated.

Having gone through the Catholic school system for my entire grade school education, I’m thrilled! Starting this year, you’ll be getting the kind of support that I never had. Congratulations on this important step, and keep up the good fight!

Correction: In the original post, I suggested that the government’s announcement would mandate the formation of GSAs, but the announcement really only mentioned “LGBT support groups.” Regardless of the title, I take this to mean explicit support for LGBT students, and not generic anti-bullying groups (otherwise what would have been the purpose of the government’s clarification on their policy last Friday?). To me, the timing and strong wording of the announcement is a stern response to recent nonsense from the Catholic boards, but in the interest of full disclosure, until the government explicitly uses the term Gay-Straight Alliance, some people are still skeptical. Either way, the government is pushing for help. Here’s hoping all will be clarified this September!

• Ontario to mandate ‘LGBT support groups’ in Catholic schools [Xtra]
• Ontario reaffirms support for gay support groups in schools [Toronto Star]

The Burnaby School Board unanimously adopted its anti-homophobia policy last week, after months of debating and church-organized protests. A crowd of about 400 students and supporters cheered outside the Burnaby School Board offices when Kaitlin Burnett, a supporter of the policy, emerged to announce its passage.

The new policy means that public schools in the region will be made safer for any student who is—or is perceived to be—gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the Toronto Catholic School Board introduced several new, gay-unfriendly amendments to its equity policy. Included among them is one that explicitly enshrines the board’s religious doctrine as taking “precedence over human rights protections,” and another that states the board will “approve only clubs which have goals that are not inconsistent with Catholic faith and the Catholic Church’s moral and doctrinal teachings” (which, in Catholic-speak, is a direct strike at the growing support for Gay-Straight Alliances in their schools—important peer support groups statistically shown to reduce bullying and increase student safety).

Having spent my entire grade school education in the Catholic system, I can vouch that it’s survivable—in the same way that Vegemite is a breakfast condiment—but things could be improved, particularly since these schools are tax funded. Until that’s no longer the case, I foresee a difficult road ahead for these sorts of amendments. What might seem like a step backwards now, could be the final straw and signal the end of this kind of nonsense for good!

• Burnaby passes anti-homophobia policy [Xtra]
• Toronto Catholic school board tries to put religion above human rights [Xtra]

An unofficial Gay-Straight Alliance at St Joseph Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario has been forbidden from displaying any rainbows at their information booth.

The school board had already banned official Gay-Straight Alliances—important peer support groups to help reduce incidences of bullying—in their schools (thus the “unofficial” nature of this group), but apparently that didn’t go far enough. “They said rainbows were associated with Pride,” Leanne Iskander, who founded the GSA, told Xtra this week. “There’s so many other things a rainbow could be. It’s ridiculous.”

Nevertheless, the group managed to sneak in some hidden rainbows by baking cupcakes with batter in all of the rainbow’s colours. They weren’t allowed to donate the proceeds to GLBT charities like LGBT Youth Line, mind you. Instead they were forced to choose a Catholic charity. (Thankfully not Exodus, an “ex-gay” organisation which is still a registered charity in Canada, cough sign-the-petition cough, cough.)

At any rate, congratulations to Leanne and the amazing GSA! Despite the artificial and ridiculous hurdles being tossed in your way by a terrified school board, you guys rock. Keep it up!

• Rainbows banned at Mississauga Catholic school [Xtra]

Catholic schools in Ontario are continuing to fight gay-straight alliances from forming, despite pleas from students to allow them.

GSAs are an effective means of reducing homophobic bullying, improving student safety and decreasing the number of gay teen suicides. For this reason, the Ontario Ministry of Education has strongly recommended that all publicly funded schools include GSAs if the students request one. This recommendation is meant to include the Catholic school system which, despite being a religious organisation, is still publicly funded.

Understanding that outright bans on GSAs generate bad press, however, Catholic schools have begun adopting a new strategy to avoid acknowledging their GLBT students. When requested by students to allow the formation of a GSA, these schools launch a replacement club: One that teaches about all kinds of tolerance and diversity instead of focusing on gay issues.

Gosh that sounds just lovely and—RUN, KIDS! It’s a trap!

You see, rather than accept the most effective means to increase student safety for GLBT students, these ostensibly inclusive groups just re-enforce the discrimination that makes gay students feel so isolated in the first place.

At a GSA meeting in Mississauga, for example, the school’s principal entered unexpectedly and drew a big umbrella on the chalkboard to indicate that their club will have to talk about issues that affect everyone instead of homophobia, effectively silencing the entire school’s GLBT student body. Separately, and more troublingly, training documents for the Halton Catholic School Board’s new GSA replacement called “SIDE spaces,” declares that “gay is not an identity,” and that gay students are “immoral and sinful.”

Most of these kinds of stories aren’t even making it to the media. I’ve now received several emails from students across the country who have had their requests for a GSA turned down. An email I received just yesterday from an Ontario student highlights exactly the same sort of ineffective replacement club that these schools are foisting upon students to silence them:

Our school’s nun decided to be our [GSA] leader, but we had to change the name of the group to be inclusive of all aspects of discrimination.

Project CAT (Project Creating Awareness Together) was what our GSA became. That would have been totally fine with me, had it not been obvious that we weren’t to speak too much about homophobia in the group.

SIDE spaces, Project CAT, and large umbrellas. I could be greatly mistaken here, but something tells me this isn’t quite what the students had in mind when they requested the formation of a GSA.

The good news, though, is that students are fighting for safety, visibility, and inclusion. I like the way that Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, the program director for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, put it: “This issue is not going away,” she told the Halton Catholic School Board during their April 5^th board meeting. “Students are empowered. Students know their rights. Students want gay-positive groups in their schools, and they will fight for them.”

Students are already proving Noa right. So, if you’re hoping to get a GSA formed in your school, keep fighting for it! Government organisations such as the Ontario Ministry of Education is on your side, and as long as you guys know your rights and keep up the pressure, these schools will eventually have to comply with their recommendations if they want to keep their public funding.

• Halton Catholic school board imposes silent ban on GSAs [Xtra]
• Mississauga GSA meeting hijacked by principal [Xtra]