A large group of parents concerned that flying a pride flag doesn’t fit with Catholic values attended a recent York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) meeting on the matter April 25. The police were called as tensions escalated, and it’s not the first time LGBTQ-related discussions have sparked such conflict at the board’s meetings.
Some attendees interrupted the meeting with shouting, and later in the atrium of the board’s office in Aurora, Ont., a crowd confronted a parent in favour of flying the flag. They chanted “shame” at him. When police arrived, many left without being asked to do so, YCDSB
said in a statement.
The board meeting included delegations both in favour of, and against, flying the flag.
Delegations
A young man who had graduated from a YCDSB school in 2020
spoke against it. He described how faith had helped heal a hole he felt inside caused by his parents’ divorce. He said others have different kinds of holes, such as those left by “confusion and personal identity like gender and sex.”
He said pride flags and other such symbols cannot “heal and bring hope into the lives of the YCDSB” students, and they “will only arouse greater confusion, pain, and darkness.” He said God has love for people who identify as LGBTQ, but such symbols “do not accurately represent the love.”
Other delegations included two students who identify as “queer,”
according to LGBTQ advocacy group Pflag York Region. Pflag president Tristan Coolman attended to support the students.
The meeting was “deeply disturbing,” Coolman
said in an open letter to the board published April 26, calling delegations against the flag “discriminatory and bigoted” and criticizing the board for allowing them.
Coolman threatened to classify YCDSB as “unsafe for the LGBTQ2IA+ community.”
‘Catholic Values’
Parent Paolo De Buono had his delegation rejected by the board because “we thought that it did not fit with the Catholic values of the school system,” YCDSB spokesperson Mark Brosens
told City News. The Epoch Times reached out to Brosens to follow up on his comment, but he provided only the board’s published statement on the matter.
“The York Catholic District School Board is involved in ongoing conversations with a number of stakeholders about whether or not to fly the Progress Pride Flag,” YCDSB
said. “The YCDSB believes that 2SLGBTQIA+ students are loved by God and are valued members of our school communities.”
De Buono was the parent confronted by the crowd in the board office’s atrium. He is also a teacher at the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
De Buono posted his
delegation online. In it he says there is “systemic homophobia and transphobia” in YCDSB. He criticizes a textbook used in Ontario’s Catholic schools to teach about sexuality, marriage, and family through the lens of the Catholic faith.
He said the “Fully Alive” textbook content “would easily be flagged as homophobia and transphobia” by the public board. The book’s critics have said its emphasis on “heterosexual marriage as the only sacramentally approved context for sexual relationships” excludes homosexuals,
according to the Catholic Register.
It’s publisher, Pearson Canada Ltd., has stopped printing it, but Ontario’s bishops and the Institute for Catholic Education intend to provide the content online for continued use in the province’s Catholic schools.
Former Liberal MP Joe Volpe was in attendance and afterward expressed support for parents against flying the flag. Some trustees showed “indifference, intolerance and disrespect” toward these parents, and that “sparked the first outbursts of anger,” Volpe
said in an op-ed for Canadian National Multilingual News Group.
Previous YCDSB meetings have experienced similar disruptions. The board has seen backlash over LGBTQ “safe space” stickers posted on doors in its schools. “Ironically, there appear to be ‘no safe spaces’ for Catholic parents in their own schools or institutional headquarters,” Volpe said.
