Video: Ontario Bill 13 rally outrage over government imposing gay agenda in all schools
TORONTO, April 2, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Last Thursday’s high-charged rally against the Ontario government’s Bill 13, imposing the province’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy (EIE) on all public and private schools, revealed many parents are dismayed over this attempt to remove parental rights. Video footage of the rally clearly reflects the intensity of the opposition to the bill from representatives of a wide variety of ethnic and faith communities. See video (see also last Friday’s report)
Phil Lees, leader of the Family Coalition Party, received perhaps the strongest reaction from rally participants while describing (not in LSN video) the bill’s intent to deprive parents of even the right to be advised about what takes place in their children’s classrooms on matters related to Bill 13. Lees emphasized, the EIE document says, “No teacher, you’re not going to tell parents.”
Lees related a call received the previous week from a distraught parent. A mother said that her 8-year- old son came home and told his mother that “he married his best friend James.” Lees continued, “when asked, how did this happen”, he was told the child responded, “today at school we were told about what it means to love. We talked about same-sex marriage and the teacher had us all decide who we would like to marry in the classroom of our friends and we had a mass same-sex wedding ceremony in the Grade 3 class.” At this point the rally crowd roared dismay and anger.
The FCP leader also charged that Bill 13 will “impose a yet to be developed provincial code of ethics” that will require everyone currently renting school and any other government facilities to agree to that provincial code of ethics. “Guess who’s developing that provincial code of ethics?”, shouted Lees, “the Ontario Human Rights Commission!”
The Ontario Human Rights Commission has been frequently criticized for its strong pro-homosexual, anti-Christian bias and for having imposed severe penalties on individuals who, because of their religious or moral conscience beliefs, “discriminated” against homosexuals .
Lees warned that Bill 13 will require the hundreds of churches that are renting space from schools to sign an agreement to adhere to the new provincial code of ethics, the implication being that they could all lose access to these much needed reasonable rent facilities.
Although pastors from several religious denominations spoke at the rally, some participants expressed concern that no Catholic clergy spoke. Rally organizer Kim Galvao told LifeSiteNews that she did extend a personal invitation to Toronto’s Cardinal Thomas Collins by email but was advised in a response from the Cardinal’s secretary that he was unable to attend. No other representative from the diocese was sent to speak at the event.
