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rfmcdonaldThe interview of Xtra!'s Andrea Houston with Tonya Callaghan, an expert on anti-gay dicrimination in publicly-funded Roman Catholic schools in Canada, is worth widely sharing.
It isn't very surprising, mind. As I pointed out on the 30th of last month, the Roman Catholic Church has gone on the record as stating that it opposes only discrimination that it judges to be "unjust", explicitly supporting discrimination against non-heterosexuals in family law, barring non-heterosexuals from multiple professions, and even opposing anti-discrimination provisions on the grounds that they only encourage people and, besides, if you're in the closet you wouldn't be discriminated against. (The policy documents in question were even authored by the current pope!) Since--as my post earlier this night points out--sexual orientation is fairly deeply embedded in human biology, and supposedly therapeutic techniques to change sexual orientation haven't worked, the result of these policies would be to inflict significant harm to non-heterosexual children. Talk of mandating anti-discrimination policies for non-heterosexual children overlooks the fact that Canadian law has a long history of pointing out that the state has a right to intervene to prevent religiously-inspired harm to minors, for instance in the case of Jehovah's Witness parents seeking to prevent their children from receiving blood transfusions.
(I would love it if the Church tried to fight these policies. I would dearly love to see it try.)
A final note: Noteworthy is the large and yawning gap between the official position of the hierarchy and what Roman Catholics actually believe. Looking worldwide, six of the ten nations that recognized same-sex marriage nation-wide--Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain--have Roman Catholic majorities or pluralities.
It isn't very surprising, mind. As I pointed out on the 30th of last month, the Roman Catholic Church has gone on the record as stating that it opposes only discrimination that it judges to be "unjust", explicitly supporting discrimination against non-heterosexuals in family law, barring non-heterosexuals from multiple professions, and even opposing anti-discrimination provisions on the grounds that they only encourage people and, besides, if you're in the closet you wouldn't be discriminated against. (The policy documents in question were even authored by the current pope!) Since--as my post earlier this night points out--sexual orientation is fairly deeply embedded in human biology, and supposedly therapeutic techniques to change sexual orientation haven't worked, the result of these policies would be to inflict significant harm to non-heterosexual children. Talk of mandating anti-discrimination policies for non-heterosexual children overlooks the fact that Canadian law has a long history of pointing out that the state has a right to intervene to prevent religiously-inspired harm to minors, for instance in the case of Jehovah's Witness parents seeking to prevent their children from receiving blood transfusions.
(I would love it if the Church tried to fight these policies. I would dearly love to see it try.)
A final note: Noteworthy is the large and yawning gap between the official position of the hierarchy and what Roman Catholics actually believe. Looking worldwide, six of the ten nations that recognized same-sex marriage nation-wide--Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain--have Roman Catholic majorities or pluralities.
When Tonya Callaghan was a teacher at a Calgary Catholic school in 2004, a young gay student at her school killed himself. The tragedy changed the course of her life forever.
Callaghan quit her job, deciding, as a queer woman, she could no longer live in the closet. She went back to university determined to find out why Catholic schools are such “hotbeds of homophobia.”
“The reason is because of Catholic doctrine that directs all the policy and practice in those schools regarding sexual minority groups," she says. "The doctrine flies in the face of the laws of the land and Canadian equality rights.”
Callaghan’s PhD research at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, entitled "Holy Homophobia: Doctrinal Disciplining of Non-Heterosexuals in Canadian Catholic Schools," caught the attention of the Canadian Association for the Study of Women and Education (CASWE), which honoured her with its doctoral award for outstanding dissertation. She presented her work at the group’s conference in Waterloo, Ontario, on May 30.
Callaghan's work also earned her the Governor General's Academic Gold Medal.
The five-year study compared Catholic education in Alberta and Ontario, looking specifically at the experience of students and teachers. Callaghan interviewed 20 people, sometimes multiple times, and generated an enormous amount of data. She says that in the national movement to eradicate faith-based homophobic bullying, Ontario is ground zero.
“My study finds students are leading this revolution,” she says. “That’s not to say the queer teachers aren’t trying. I was a queer Catholic teacher myself once. I tried to do what I could from within the system, but teachers' hands are tied. Many are being fired.”
The former Catholic teacher says she didn’t wait for the school to fire her. After the suicide of the promising Grade 12 drama student, who suffered months of homophobic bullying, she resigned.
“He did seek guidance at school,” she says. “The counsellor gave him the Catholic party line: ‘It’s okay to be gay, just don’t act on it. And if you do act on it, you’re a sinner.’ This boy was being bullied. He asks for help and gets more bullying from the guidance counsellor.
“That’s why the Pastoral Guidelines to Assist Students of Same-Sex Attraction are so dangerous. The bishops insist that the document be taught to everyone, especially guidance counsellors, and disseminated to students. They say ‘same-sex attraction’ because they want it to sound like an illness, which is why you need ‘pastoral care.’”
Based on the Catholic catechism, the Pastoral Guidelines are the primary counselling resource used by Catholic educators. The guidelines state that gay people are “intrinsically disordered” and “gravely depraved.” Callaghan says the doctrine is like bullying to queer youth.
