Outcome of the Ontario Catholic School System, and Bill 13

In a previous posting (2 posts ago), I had talked about the proposed changes to Ontario anti-bullying laws, which directly affected the Catholic Church's ability to censor and side-line Gay-Straight Alliances.
(you may also wish to read the post after that one, but before this one)


I'm happy to say that Bill 13 passed on June 5^th, which is great news.  But of course we can still hear plenty of griping, whining, and victim playing, which is so ironic when the same group playing victim, regularly victimizes others.  But that's nothing I had not been counting on.  To not be above the law, is to be made into seconds-class citizens with no religious rights or freedoms.  Oddly, I think that it was about protecting a person's right to worship, rather than their right to harm others, but oh well.

Of course, now there are accusations that this entire fiasco was just Liberal attempt to reopen the debate on the public funding of the Catholic "separate schools," at least as far as the Conservatives are concerned, which by the way, was the only party to oppose this bill.

The Conservatives say McGuinty used the anti-bullying bill to intentionally trigger a debate over the funding of Catholic schools that they believe Ontarians do not want to have.

The above quotation was taken from this article, published on June 5^th, 2012.

I had also been intending to write about the challenge from the Centre for Inquiry's Justin Trottier to defund the Ontario Catholic "separate schools" that was sparked by this aggressive resistance to human rights on the part of the Catholic Church.  While this was the causing factor, the CFI's chairperson Kevin Smith also laid out numerous additional factors at play here, which are not at all compatible with a school system the is being publicly funded, paid for by all tax-payers.  I for one would not be very please if I was an Ontario tax-payer.  I tend not to financially support hatred and bigotry, let alone undermining our progress, moving backward into the past.  Charge appropriate tuition, and have a bake-sale like most other private religious schools.  For that matter, perhaps the wealthy Catholic Church could pay for their own proselytizing and abuse.
Here is the news item on CFI Canada's website.  Which also links to the actual media advisory at the top of the page.

While we can count on not seing such a change to government and education any time soon, I remain somewhat hopeful for the more distant future.  From a few more articles I've looked over, one of them is reporting that a poll shows nearly half of Ontario citizens not in support of this funding.  I believe the other half would likely be a mixture of those who actually agree with the Catholic Church's madness, as well as those who do not really understand the issues and legalities, and are thus ignorantly passive in the entire matter.  The same ones that would likely label myself intolerant of religion, simply for valuing secular society, and the equality of all religious beliefs, including the lack of any belief.  Like I said, many just don't understand, and add to the problem by indiscriminately condemning anyone that has a strong stance, regardless of what that stance may be.


And would you look at this bit of positive irony...
A few notable sections of a quite uplifting article:

Kevin O’Dwyer, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, said his 43,000 members welcome the legislation, which passed third and final reading on Tuesday, because it allows schools to protect students from homophobia and other forms of discrimination.

And this is not to be unexpected either.  In fact, polls have on numerous occasions demonstrated that the majority of Catholic believers in fact support either gay marriage, or gay civil unions.  This really is a ridiculous situation we have here, where it is only the clergy and more extremist members of the Church, that even believe in all this hatred and bigotry.  While I would still say that most Catholics have a ways to go on tolerance and especially understanding, they are indeed most willing, and have already come so far.
Of course, I would have to say that if they do not accept the bigotry, hatred, and so on, perhaps they should give their heads another shake, then think about why they are in that church.  Yes, likely because while they do not accept such things, they still feel that the Catholic Church is the way to God and the salvation of Christ.

Indeed there are Catholics, even organized groups of Catholics, that not only do not participate in bigotry, but the proudly, and very publicly stand up against the bigotry.  I really have nothing but respect for them.  You believe in completely unproven supernatural claims?  Well at least you still value what is fair, just, and right, in this reality!!  That's worth a lot in my books!

And of course, we just can't do without the vicious, bigoted hateful disgust  of the very confused Pro-Life movement.  Worry about banning a woman's right to medical decisions, in favour of an underdeveloped fetus, and of course, if we are talking about gays, well we don't even need to turn fetuses into self-aware people in order to strip their rights away, do we??

Campaign Life Coalition, a national pro-life group, is calling on church leaders and Catholic school boards to invoke Section 93 of the Constitution Act and reject the legislation on the grounds that it adversely impacts their faith and morals. 

“This legislation now puts a radical homosexual agenda in every publicly funded, Catholic and public school across Ontario, under the guise of ‘bullying prevention,’ ” Campaign Life says in a statement.

A RADICAL AGENDA (Superb Example of Irony & Hypocrisy)

Click to Enlarge

Yeah, those damned radical agendas... Remember what happened when they told us in school not to bully those of other ethnicities??  We can't make that mistake again, I tell you what!!!!
The only radical agenda that I'm seeing here, is that of hatred and intolerance.

And from the first paragraph in the above quote, the hypocrisy is just so stunning, in the phrase, "...on the grounds that it adversely impacts their faith and morals."

1. If your faith is not compatible with the fair and just treatment of others, then your faith does not deserve consideration here.
2. Morals?  A serial rapist could say the same thing.  That laws against rape are "adversely impacting my morals, being that I think it's wrong to ask for sex."  Just as with faith, if your "morals" are not compatible with the fair and just treatment of others, then they are not to be considered.

The audacity of these dangerously hateful people is just astounding.  To literally claim that it is "a matter of my morals" to harm others, simply for being who they are...  Morals can be chosen on an individual level, but only to the point that your personal morals do not affect others in a negative way.

To the bigots:  If you are not gay, then guess what??  You won't become gay by being exposed to this horrible thing call tolerance and acceptance!!  Contrary to uneducated and delusional homophobic bigots such as yourself, that think it's a choice because of scripture and your lies, that you can get therapy to be straight again (which does not work, unless you consider suicide to be a cure), you don't just chose your sexual orientation.  So get over your personal shortcomings and character-flaws, irrational phobias and paranoid delusions.... And, well, once you do that I frankly don't care what you do.

And that's what most of this boils down to.  They are offensively, dishonestly, and willfully ignorant to the fact that sexual orientation is just something that makes a person who he/she is.  Just the same as having brown hair as opposed to red hair.  If we start up a club called the "Brown and Red Hair Alliance," there is absolutely no threat to those who have brown hair, suddenly realizing that their hair is beginning to turn red.  This has been proven, time and time again, that sexual orientation is biological, not conscious.  Yet, they simply wish to keep fighting the truth, because lo and behold, ancient mythical scriptures condemn it.  Just as it orders non-virgin brides and adulteresses to be stoned, for rape victims to either be stoned or marry her rapist depending on whether she belongs to another man or not....  Yes, clearly the source of truth and morality...  If people are foolish enough to buy into that, well I won't stop them.  But I'm afraid we have this thing called society, and that society thing has something called laws and rational morality.  If they cannot accept that, well then I see a very serious problem.  They may believe what they will, deny reality all they wish, but only until it harms others.  Yes, I am being intolerant... Of intolerance, discrimination, and hate, or what they call "faith and morals."

This is bigotry.  Hate.  It is the discrimination and hatred of a certain group.  Not one bit different than racism, anti-semitism, and sexism.  In fact, sexism is rampant in Christianity (religion) as well.  God hates women, so the loving Christians should too.  Risk a woman's life, force her to complete a pregnancy, because the soul of the underdeveloped fetus is more important.  And the sexism goes FAR beyond just that one example.  These are their "morals."

Instead of calling them "morals," how about we go back to the traditional term for these things?  Hatred and bigotry???  Why in this universe, are we tolerating this hatred, and labeling religious bigots as "good people," when they are so clearly NOT!???!?
Bigotry is not the thing to be tip-toeing around, hoping we don't make the bigots whine about their religious rights to abuse other human beings!!!!!!

How many more gay students for example, must DIE before we will as a society stand up to what is simply unacceptable??  100?  10,000?  1,000,000??  You tell me, because I would have thought no more...