Edmonton Catholic board replaces gender-bending policy, but new one still undercuts the faith
The
Edmonton Catholic School Board passed a new gender policy on Tuesday in a 5-2
vote that appears to please no one. The policy, while a big improvement on
their earlier one, still misrepresents Catholic teaching, while also enraging
LGBTQ activists.
The
page-and-a-half document is a major revision of an earlier September proposal which would have allowed boys who identify as
female into girls’ change rooms and to play on girls’ sports teams.
The
revised policy, however, simply states that the board is committed to providing
“all students” with a “fully inclusive school community” and an “environment
that is free from discrimination of any type including but not limited to
discrimination based on race, color, gender identity, gender expression, age,
physical, and mental characteristics, nationality, sexual orientation, family
status, or marital status.”
The
policy states in its preamble that since “all children are unique, loved by
God, and created in God’s image, then “all human beings are inherently sacred
and must be treated with dignity and respect.”
It
goes on, however, to state what the policy drafters assumed the Catholic Church
teaches in this regard.
“The Catholic Church teaches that: … respect for the fundamental rights of the person, demands that every type of discrimination, whether based on sex, race, colour, social condition, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, language or religion is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent.”
But
nowhere, however, does the Catholic faith teach that discrimination based on
"gender identity and expression, sexual orientation” must be
"overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent.”
While
the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “every sign of unjust
discrimination in their [same-sex attracted people] regard should be avoided,”
official Church documents have pointed out how the word “unjust” means that
there can be a “just” form of discrimination against persons actively engaged
in the homosexual lifestyle. Such examples of "just" discrimination
include the Catholic Church's refusal to call the partnership of two active
homosexuals “marriage, or not allowing children to be adopted by such partners,
or not allowing active homosexuals to become priests.
The
Catholic Church holds that homosexuality is contrary to God's plan for
sexuality since homosexual acts are "contrary to the natural law" in
that they "close the sexual act to the gift of life." The Church
teaches, moreover, that such acts are "acts of grave depravity" and
that "under no circumstances can they be approved."
A
1992 Vatican document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
concretely spelled out a few areas in which such discrimination is permissible.
“There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation
into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster
care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military
recruitment," the document, titled Some Considerations Concerning the Response to
Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons, stated.
In
a 2004 document from
the same Congregation, Cardinal Ratzinger, prior to becoming Pope Benedict,
made it clear that while Christians must avoid “unjust discrimination against
homosexual persons,” he added that when legal recognition is given to same-sex
relationship and referred to as “marriage,” then “clear and emphatic opposition
is a duty.”
Marni
Panas, a transgendered activist who had been campaigning for a policy closer to
the first draft, said the new policy will do nothing to advance LGBTQ students
in their schools.
"Nothing
has changed, and it's very disappointing," Panas told CBC News. “The
board, by voting for the policy, missed an opportunity to be on the right side
of a crucial human rights issue,” he added.
The
new policy, which lists no specific ways in which LGBTQ students will be
accommodated, comes as a surprise given that in January, trustees in the
Edmonton Board publicly defied the
leadership of Alberta’s bishops on the gender issue by slamming a letter from
Calgary Bishop Fred Henry that had denounced the NDP government's new
"gender identity" guidelines as “totalitarian” and
“anti-Catholic."
Later
that same month, Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith reprimanded the Catholic
trustees for betraying Catholic parents who elected them.
“There,
for too long now, we have witnessed the inability of trustees to function in a
cohesive way or speak with a unified voice. The words and actions of some
trustees, rather than defending and upholding all that is good in Catholic
education, have caused harm and hostility. In so doing, they have betrayed the
trust placed in them by Catholic electors,” he said at that time. Given that
the new policy is much closer to Catholic teaching than the previous draft, it
would seem that Archbishop Smith has managed to influence the trustees in a
positive manner.
LifeSiteNews
reached out to Archbishop Smith for comment on the new policy, but did not
receive a response by press time.
Education
Minister David Eggen — who in January released the controversial “best
practices” guidelines that he expects all school boards in the province,
including Catholic ones, to use in forming mandatory transgender policies that
must be in place this month — says that he is planning to provide feedback on
the board’s new policy.
"I
will review it after it has been submitted. I will then provide feedback,
keeping in mind the government's commitment to ensuring all students are
guaranteed basic human rights, and that all schools are welcoming, caring,
respectful and safe,” he told reporters.
