According to a Globe and Mail article, the Catholic Church in Ontario is using Canada’s Constitution to justify bigotry,
A little-known provision in Canada’s Constitution could complicate Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s effort to force the province’s Catholic schools to allow gay-straight alliance clubs.
Eugene Meehan , a constitutional scholar, claims,
Section 93 of the Constitution Act of 1867 protects the rights of Catholics to run their own schools in ways consistent with their religious doctrines.
However, although Meehan maintains the Catholics have the constitutional “right to maintain the religious character of the schools and to function according to Catholic philosophy and tenets,” he does not say whether Catholics have the constitutional right to expect these schools to be publicly funded.
Ontario taxpayers should not be expected to pay for Catholic education when implicit in that education is blatant bigotry toward LGBT students. Of course, Catholic leaders in Ontario bristle at the word bigotry; they prefer to say that “GSAs contradict the church’s teachings” because, after all, “homosexual activity is a sin.”
The Catholic Church, always eager to maintain its power and spread its propaganda, uses emotive words like sin to intimidate its opponents and keep its flock in line. However, if Catholic parents who are so eager to have their children educated in Catholic schools were made to pay for this privilege, they would immediately see the value of one publicly funded school system in Ontario.
h/t Eschaton 2012 Twitter