A rally organized by Concerened Catholic Parents of Ontario took place yesterday at the Provincial Legislature. Here is a report from the PAFE (Parents as First Educators) newsletter.
(Toronto, March 30, 2012) Parents as First Educators spokesman, Teresa Pierre, told a crowd of 2000 outside the Ontario Legislature Building on Thursday afternoon that her members support any anti-bullying bill that adds new tools to fight bullying but that they oppose bill 13 because it mandates an equity curriculum that parents oppose. Parents are particularly concerned about the provision of age-inappropriate material to children of young ages in the sexual education component and elsewhere. "How much more strongly do parents have to say that they want less sexualization of children, not more?" she asked. The crowd of Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus responded with enthusiastic cheers.You have to admit that the anti-Christian and anti-Family cultural Marxists, nihilists and sex worshipers employ clever rhetoric. They want a law to force Catholic schools to teach that historic Christian teaching about sexuality is wrong. So they claim that Biblical teaching leads to bullying homosexuals and then they bully politicians into persecuting Christians and taking away parental rights to decides what ethics their children will be taught. Brilliant! But then again, the Devil has always been clever.
Onlookers said how much they enjoyed hearing the different faith-perspectives of various groups. The common denominator was concern to protect children against bullying, but with measures that respect their faith traditions. Many groups, including non-Catholic groups, said that Liberal Education Minister Laurel Broten's attempt to override the statements of Catholic bishops opposed to having GSAs in Catholic schools was a kind of thought control no Canadian should support.
Inside Queen's Park MPPs were debating Conservative anti-bullying bill 14. MPP Glen Murray said that the Catholic faith teaches that homosexuals are disordered. Outside speaker Jack Fonseca from Campaign Life Coalition stated that the Church does not condemn or say that individuals are intrinsically disordered by virtue of same-sex attraction. Murray attempted to paint members of ordinary mainstream denominations demonstrating outside as extremists in order to diminish their concerns.
Pierre stated that parents are opposed to bill 13 because it will likely trigger years of costly lawsuits against the province which will ultimately be paid by the taxpayers. In a time of global financial crisis, parents need to pay their bills, and they are not going to tolerate wasting their hard-earned cash when it could be paying for the gas to take their kids to hockey practice. Parents think bill 14 offers new tools to address bullying such as a third-party body to oversee situations in which parents find they are not making headway with their school principals. They do not support bill 13 because "it is a grave violation of our conscience rights, we think it is just a feel-good measure, and we think it will cause social upheaval and add to our own financial distress."
The rally was sponsored by Concerned Catholic Parents of Ontario. Other speakers included TDSB Trustee Allan Tam and several individuals from the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu faiths. Several PC MPPs stopped by to listen, including PC MPP John O'Toole, who challenged the application of the term homophobic to demonstrators by MPP Liz Sandals later that afternoon during the Parliamentary debates.MPPs from all parties praised bill 14, speaking of the need to move forward on progress toward an anti-bullying bill. Just before Parliament ended for the day Witmer's bill was referred to the social policy committee. One wonders how quickly Bill 13 will join it there.
A small group of 20 protestors stood nearby shouting that Catholic parents favor bullying.
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