11.1(1) A board as defined in the School Act shall provide notice to a parent or guardian of a student where courses of study, educational programs or instructional materials, or instruction or exercises, prescribed under that Act include subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation.
I wonder what exactly counts as 'explicitly'? Does saying the word 'God' count? How about 'bible', 'Christian', 'Islam', etc? How does a History teacher deal with discussions of the World Trade Centre/Pentagon attacks? Does using the term 'gay' to accurately characterise Oscar Wilde in an English class or Alan Turing in a computer science class count? Is being 'gay' here simply superfluous? Sexual orientation is not an integral part of who one is?
Ok. Then perhaps teachers who go by their married names need to be wary: introducing one's self as 'Mrs. Clarke' certainly conventionally implies that the teacher is heterosexual insofar as Mrs Clarke is or was married to Mr Clarke (women married to each other rarely use honorific 'Mrs.'). Clearly a notification is warranted.
I think this is beginning to become absurd.
The general fear that seems to generate this sort of legislation is the fear of the 'homosexual agenda:'[1] a generalised fear that homosexuals are out to convince people to be gay. An appropriate retort to this fear:
No, what the gay community wants is to stamp out the kind of toxic, pervasive homophobia that makes the lives of some Alberta kids a living hell. They don't want to teach your kid to be gay. They want to teach your kid not to punch or mock the kid who is -- or the kid who just doesn't fit in. They want to teach young Albertans to be accepting of difference (via Edmonton Journal).
Just so. The simplistic idea that 'being gay is a lifestyle choice' is irrelevant. Either it is a choice like religion and should be protected as a matter of conscience or is it not a choice, like ethnicity, and should be protected as a matter of genetics. protections are protections and a better argument than 'I don't like it' is going to have to be raised.
At any rate, what this Bill grants as a right is a parent's right to raise their child in ignorance. In my view, this is tantamount to child abuse. I might ask here 'what of the child's right to an education? To their opportunity to decide for themselves?' It strikes me that parents who want the right to restrict their children's education on these matters are either too lazy to do the requisite parenting that goes along with instruction at that level or are terrified that they do not have the arguments to defend their views against an intelligent, questioning child. Nevertheless, what we are licensing here is the right of a parent to instil bigotry in their child without interference from the rest of society (in the form of the educational system).
For those whose religious beliefs make homosexuality anathema, that's probably threatening enough. If you sincerely believe that homosexuality is a sin, you're not going to be very happy if your child's school library orders a copy of And Tango Makes Three, the charming, albeit controversial, picture book about two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo who hatch a chick.
For some, any effort to normalize homosexuality, to affirm the equal worth of gay and lesbian Albertans as citizens and human beings, will be abhorrent. Bishop Henry himself, let's recall, was the subject of a human rights complaint in 2005, after he wrote a pastoral letter recommending the government use its "coercive power" to "proscribe or curtail" homosexuality -- along with prostitution and pornography -- "in the interests of the common good."
Well, with all due respect, I don't really care if efforts to normalise homosexuality offends some people. I also don't care about the offence that people might feel when I suggest that women should be able to vote or that persons of colour are... well, people. The religious views of parents are their religious views and that's fine. As Ms Simons argues,
For what it's worth, I defend his right to publish those views. Parents -- like clerics -- have a right to believe that homosexuality is wrong or unnatural, and to pass that belief on to those in their care. But we can respect their personal religious rights, without letting our teachers and our classrooms be held hostage to their views.
If parents have views which are worth having and teaching to their children, those beliefs are worthy of being tested. Chilren are to valuable to have views hidden from them.
[1] Justice Scalia of the US Supreme Court got it right in Lawrence, et al. v. Texas when he wrote of "the so-called homosexual agenda, by which [he meant] the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct." Notice that all homosexuals are doing is arguing that homosexual conduct is not immoral behaviour. Consider this parody of the 'homosexual agenda.'
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