A Bit More Detail

There is also strong support for gay-straight alliances from students in both public and Catholic schools in Ontario.

In a 2011 survey of over 7,000 students for the Ontario Student Trustees' Association, 88 per cent agreed,"that a student wanting to establish a Gay Straight Alliance club in their school should be allowed to do so."

What's more, surveys in both Canada and the U.S. found bullying of sexual minority students is less common in schools that have an anti-homophobia policy and/or have a gay-straight alliance.

In a May 28 interview with CBC Radio's Matt Galloway, Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten defended her new amendments.

"To many of our students, we know that the term gay-straight alliance has great meaning and that words matter and that if you can't name something, you can't address it," she said.

Philip Squire, chair of the London District Catholic School Board, told CBC Radio's Wei Chen that "no student has come forward and said they want a gay-straight alliance."

The legislation actually accounts for that: If no student requests such a group, a school would not be required to establish a GSA.

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition

There is an effort in some countries to manipulate the Church by gaining the often well-intentioned support of her pastors with a view to changing civil-statutes and laws. This is done in order to conform to these pressure groups' concept that homosexuality is at least a completely harmless, if not an entirely good, thing. Even when the practice of homosexuality may seriously threaten the lives and well-being of a large number of people, its advocates remain undeterred and refuse to consider the magnitude of the risks involved.

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.

The "sexual orientation" of a person is not comparable to race, sex, age, etc. also for another reason than that given above which warrants attention. An individual's sexual orientation is generally not known to others unless he publicly identifies himself as having this orientation or unless some overt behavior manifests it. As a rule, the majority of homosexually oriented persons who seek to lead chaste lives do not publicize their sexual orientation. Hence the problem of discrimination in terms of employment, housing, etc., does not usually arise.

• 80 Beats' Andrew Mosemen reports that Japan's unlucky Hayabusa asteorid probe is on track to return to Earth with its sample container, even though the probe might not have succeeded in taking a sample after all.


• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton writes about how the future may well give birth to new kinds of discrimination, suggesting that people who try to technologically augment their bodies might be the next major sufferers.


• Crooked Timber's Ingrid Robeyns tells her readers that a leading Belgian bishop has resigned after admitting that he sexually abused a family member for at least a decade.


• Daniel Drezner wonders where all the anti-globalization protesters have gone.


• Extraordinary Observations' Rob Pitingolo takes a look at some of New York City's best coffee shops.


• Joel at Far Outliers quotes at length a writer on how madrassahs often provide much better education than state schools.


• Geocurrents examines how unexpectedly heavy rain in Australia has led to a temporary revival of Australia's landlocked Lake Eyre.


• Personal Observations' Jim Belshaw observes that regional disparities within particular jurisdictions--nation-states, states, provinces--can produce serious internal conflicts.


• Slap Upside the Head observes the hysterical, and homophobic, opposition to a recently withdrawn plan for sex education in Ontario.


• Surprise! Towleroad notes a recent study observing that queers are substantially more likely to suffer violence than their straight counterparts.


• Alex Harrowell at the Yorkshire Ranter examines how a French project to implement personal rapid transit failed thanks to internal culture clashes and a failure to consult outsiders.

What [the anti-Semite] contemplates without intermission, that for which he has an intuition and almost a taste, is Evil. He can thus glut himself to the point of obsession with the recital of obscene or criminal actions which excite and satisfy his perverse leanings; but since at the same time he attributed them to those infamous Jews on whom he heaps his scorn, he satisfies himself without being compromised. In Berlin, I knew a Protestant in whom sexual desire took the form of indignation. The sight of women in bathing suits aroused him to fury; he willingly encouraged that fury, and passed his time at swimming pools. The anti-Semite is like that, and one of the elements of his hatred is a profound sexual attraction toward Jews (46).

In a bourgeois society it is the constant movement of people, the collective currents, the styles, the customs, all these things, that in effect create values. The values of poems, of furniture, of houses, of landscapes derive in large part from the spontaneous condensations that fall on this objects like a light dew; they are strictly national and result from the normal functioning of a traditionalist and historical society. To be a Frenchman is not merely to have been born in France, to vote and pay taxes; it is above all to have the use and the sense of these values. And when a man shares in their creation, he is in some degree reassured about himself; he has a justification for existence through a sort of adhesion to the whole of society. To know how to appreciate a piece of Louis Seize furniture, the delicacy of a saying by Chamfort, a landscape of the Ile de France, a painting by Claude Lorraine, is to affirm and to feel that one belongs to French society; it is to renew a tacit social contract with all the members of that society. At one stroke the vague contingency of your existence vanishes and gives way to the necessity of an existence by right. Every Frenchman who is moved by reading Villon or by lo0looking at the Palace of Versailles becomes a public functionary and the subject of imprescriptible rights.

Now a Jew is a man who is refused access to these values on principle. No doubt the worker is in the same predicament, but his situation is different. He can disdainfully reject the values and the culture of the middle class; he can dream of substituting his own. The Jew, he theory, belongs to the very class of people who reject him; he shares their tastes and their way of life. He touches these values but he does not see them; they should be his and they are refused him. He is told that he is blind. Naturally that is false. Are we to believe that Bloch, Crémieux, Suarès, Schwob, Benda understand the great French masterpieces less well than a Christian grocer or a Christian policeman? Are we to believe that Max Jacob was less competency to handle our language than an "Aryan" municipal clerk? Proust, a half-Jew, did he understand Racine only halfway? As between the "Aryan" Chuquet, celebrated for his bad style, and the Jew Léon Bum, which one has understood Stendhal the better?

But it is of no importance that this is an erroneous notion; the fact is that it is a group error. The Jew must decide for himself whether it is true or false; indeed, he must prove it. And yet people will always reject the proof which he furnishes. He may go as far as he wants to understanding a work of art, a custom, a period, a style. What constitutes the truevalue of the object considered, a value accessible only to Frenchmen of the "real France," is exactly that which is beyond and which cannot be expressed in words. in vain may argue about his culture, his accomplishments: it is a Jewish culture; they are Jewish accomplishments. He is a Jew precisely in that he does not even suspect what ought to be understood. Thus an attempt is made to persuade him that the true sense of things must always escape him; there is formed around him an impalpable atmosphere, which is the genuine France, with its genuine values, its genuine tact, its genuine mortality, and he has no part in it. (80-82).