TORONTO, ON, September 16, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)
– The Toronto District School Board has confirmed it will not permit
students to opt out of any portion of public school curricula that deals
with homosexuality or gender identity, stating as its reason that these
groups fall under Ontario Human Rights Code protection.
In this, the TDSB follows the lead of the Peel school board,
which announced a similar policy concurrent with the Liberal
government’s September roll out of its controversial sex-ed curriculum
in all Ontario’s publicly funded schools.
Spokesperson
Ryan Bird told LifeSiteNews in a telephone interview that while the
TDSB has a “board-wide policy” for parents to “request a religious
accommodation when it comes to the sex-ed curriculum,” the board “will
not be making accommodations for people that are requesting to opt out
of portions of the curriculum that have to do with sexual orientation or
gender identity.”
“When
there’s a request not to learn about an identifiable group…whether it’s
sex, gender, race, culture, religion, that’s something we wouldn’t
accommodate for,” Bird said, adding the ban on opting out is “about
anything that would start to get into the human rights territory.”
But
according to constitutional lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos, this
position is “absolutely ridiculous from a legal perspective, at least in
my opinion.”
“I
think that the Peel school board – and if the Toronto school board is
doing this, it as well – are grasping at straws and are making it up as
they go,” he told LifeSiteNews in a telephone interview.
Not
only is opting out of lessons dealing with homosexuality and gender
identity not discrimination, but “if the objection of parents is
grounded in religion or moral conscience or belief, the school has a
duty to accommodate,” said Polizogopoulos.
“School
boards are also bound by Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which
protects freedom of conscience and religion,” noted the Ottawa-based
lawyer.
He represents parent Steven Tourloukis,
who is currently suing Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board over
the right to withdraw his children from classes he finds morally and
religiously offensive.
Polizogopoulos
says it’s true that the Ontario Human Rights Code prohibits
discrimination based on a number of grounds, including sexual
orientation, gender identity, race, creed, and age.
“However,
accommodating a parent’s request to pull their kids out of a specific
class dealing with, let’s say, alternative families, does not translate
into discriminating against individuals who are perhaps of a different
sexual orientation,” he said.
“It
simply isn’t, because you’re not treating the child from the
alternative family any differently,” Polizogopoulos stressed. “You’re
accommodating the person whose religious or moral or cultural beliefs
would have them not want to sit in that class.”
Campaign
Life Coalition spokesman Jack Fonseca agrees, and says the boards’
opt-out bans are “intimidation tactics” based on a “bogus right” and
that parents must fight back.
“I
think parents should push back very strongly. They should be very blunt
and tell these administrators at the school board that there is no
bogus right that allows you to eradicate the religious and moral values
from the hearts and minds of my children,” he told LifeSiteNews.
“Show
me the section of the Human Rights Code that states explicitly that
classroom teachers have the right to impose their own values about sex
on other people’s children,” Fonseca said. “It’s not there, period. This
is an intimidation tactic, and the only way the school board will get
away with this is if parents allow them to.”
As
did lawyer Polizogopoulos, Fonseca pointed out that “discrimination is
telling a student who is same-sex attracted that they won’t be served
lunch in the cafeteria.”
But
“preventing the school from indoctrinating your own child with beliefs
that are counter to your own religious and moral beliefs, that is not
discrimination.”
These
selective bans on parental opt-out come despite the Liberal
government’s promise that parents could withdraw their children from
sex-ed classes for religious or moral reasons – a right that is
guaranteed in the Education Act, as Liberal Education Minister Liz
Sandals assured parents when she released the sex-ed curriculum last
February.
Moreover,
compounding the difficulty for parents who wish to protect their
children from a morally objectionable sexual agenda is that the
prohibition against opt-out for lessons on sexual orientation and gender
identity holds for all curricula, not just sex education, as TDSB’s
Bird confirmed.
“The
idea of sexual orientation and gender identity is just a part of the
curriculum in general, essentially,” he told LifeSiteNews. “To say that
some kids have two moms, some kids have two dads, something as simple as
that is part of the curriculum, not necessarily just the health and
physical education curriculum.”
The
fact that acceptance of homosexuality permeates the curriculum and is
pushed by teachers in a variety of subjects was demonstrated earlier
this year by two Peel lesbian teachers
at a pro-gay Toronto teachers conference, where they explained how to
use math lessons and introduce pro-gay books in kindergarten to advance
acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle.
But
both Fonseca and Polizogopoulos contend that parents can prevail
against the Liberal government’s implementation of its sexual agenda in
the schools.
“The
status of the law in Canada right now is that parents are the final
authority on the education and the upbringing of their children,”
Polizogopoulos stressed. “When parents send their kids to school they
delegate that authority, but they retain it.”
“I
would certainly say in my view the law is certainly on the side of the
parents,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Parents get to decide what, where, how,
and by whom their children are taught.”
Fonseca also emphasized that parents should keep up opposition.
“Protest with your feet,” he urged. “Pull your child out of school. Join the ‘empty schools campaign’ that Thorncliffe Park
is leading right now. Pull your child out in protest and inform your
school board, your teacher, your principal and your MPP, and threaten
that you will pull your child out permanently.”
“And
know that that threat carries a lot of weight with these school board
bureaucrats, because each child who is withdrawn costs them $10,000 per
student per year.”
And
if enough parents pull out their kids and homeschool them or enroll
them in co-op or private schools, the ripple effect will eventually be a
noticeable loss of jobs in the public school system, Fonseca predicted.
“And as much as the left-wing teachers’ unions love to promote radical sexual philosophies, they love their teacher jobs more.”
Source: LifeSiteNews
Topic: Canadian Parents in the predominately Muslim community Continue "Unprecedented" Strike Over Controversial Sex-Ed in School
(Toronto,
Canada)–An unprecedented 30-day student school "strike" to protest the
Ontario Liberal government's controversial sex-ed curriculum entered its
second week on a surge of strength. (Photo via LifeSiteNews) 
