Much Ado About Religious Accommodation

Much is being made of a decision by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) managers at Toronto's Pearson airport to allow a small group of Hindu priests to avoid screening by female border guards to comply with their religious beliefs.

Apparently some female CBSA officers feel that they were discriminated against by this decision. I could understand an outrage if female officers were only allowed to deal with female visitors but this was a small exemption made for a special case. Why all the fuss about this when so many more significant examples of religious discrimination are entrenched in our laws and practices in the name of freedom of religion.

For example an employer being allowed to designate higher profile positions for males only and more subservient positions for women only. This is a clear violation of all Canadian employment legislation and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms but still allowed in the name of freedom of religion.

What about persons delegated by the state the right to perform legal marriage ceremonies being allowed to discriminate in terms of who they will marry on the basis of their personal religious beliefs.

And much more serious, medical practitioners, such as doctors and pharmacists, being allowed to refuse to provide medical treatment or services on the basis of their personal religious beliefs.

Perhaps one of the most outrageous examples of discriminatory religious accommodation, a clear violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but constitutionally allowed, is the public funding of religious-based schools for one religious group only (and not even the largest group at that) - a huge government subsidy to one religious group that all political parties are afraid to deal with because of the risk of losing that groups votes.

If we are to be outraged by inappropriate religious accommodation let us be outraged by matters of substance, not by attempts to accommodate a small groups religious preference that has little impact on others' rights.

Postscript

This post sees the return of the Fifth Column after an interregnum, not caused by a lack of ideas but simply a lack of motivation to make the effort to write them down. Hopefully my posts will be more regular from now on.

God Created Adam and Eve Not Adam and Steve

I'm really not sure why religious right wingers always seem to use this phrase in reference to the Adam and Eve story (as well as other Old Testament references) to justify their claims that homosexuality is an abomination (and as the Catholic school system would call it "intrinsically disordered"). The lesson from the Adam and Eve story doesn't exactly fit in with their moral code.

After all if you accept the story of "the rib", Eve was essentially Adam's cloned sister. So according to the Biblical version of the origin of the species the first two humans were siblings, who had sex to produce the second generation, also siblings who had sex to produce the third generation (well there was another possibility but it still would be incestuous). And then it was the cousins and so on and so on. So mankind is based on incest according to their literal interpretation of the Bible.

Of course if we accept Old Testament stories as fact people seemed to live a long time back then so maybe incest was not such a bad thing. But I prefer to base my opinion of the desirability of incest on scientific studies into the impact of "in-breeding".

I also prefer to base my understanding of the origin of the species on the scientific explanation of The Origin of Species.

According to the theory of evolution and natural selection non-useful traits of a species will disappear over time with evolution. Thus if homosexuality was not naturally useful to mankind it would have disappeared, The fact that it has not simply proves that it is natural and good.

Thinking It Through Brings Clarity

So what is an atheist who believes in a single secular public school system supposed to think about noon hour Muslim prayers in public schools.

The answer should be simple but first let us look at the context.

In the province of Ontario there are two publicly funded school systems, one for a specific religion and one for everybody else (all other religions and non-religious persons). If one did not have an understanding of the province's constitutional history, one might assume the religion with the separate school system was the largest religious group in the province, but actually it is the second largest group that gets special treatment.

This religion has it's own school system where they are allowed to indoctrinate students in their religion and adopt policies that provide "when there is an apparent conflict between denominational rights and other rights, the board will favour the protection of the denominational rights".

While the Roman Catholic Church, and it's separate school boards, may be exempt from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Constitution Act, Section 29), I cannot ignore it.

Thus, as long as one religion is allowed to have it's own publicly funded school boards in which to indoctrinate students, the minimum reasonable accommodation that should be made for other religions, in the name of equality, is to allow them to use school facilities for prayer services for the convenience of students, as long as no one is compelled to attend such services.

The real solution, of course, is a constitutional amendment to remove discriminatory rights given to one religion and provide for one secular public school system in Ontario, as has been done in other provinces, including Quebec.

The Hypocritical Lies in Dalton McGuinty's Education Ads

Listen to the Liberal education ads (Number 7) and tell me if you did not hear Dalton McGuinty say that public schools are what makes Ontario Ontario because students of all religions learn together and that public funding of segregated religious schools would be bad for Ontario.

After hearing him speak you might even think that he would send his own children to public schools rather than segregated religious schools. You might even think that he believes that the public should not fund segregated religious schools. But you would be wrong.

These are the most hypocritical lies I have ever heard from a politician.

Faith-Based About Face

Tory's Policy No Longer Tories Policy

John Tory raised this issue with a principled but wrong position. Now he is just wrong.

Meanwhile Dalton McGuinty continues to oppose public funding for (non-Catholic) faith based-schools and carries on about how he supports public education while pretending the the Catholic School system does not exist.

And Howard Hampton carries on about how schools need more money while pretending the faith-based issue does not exist.

Only the Greens can claim to have a principled position on public education.

Why I Am Not Voting NDP This Election

Since I started voting in 1968 there have only been two previous times I did not vote for the NDP. Once was as a protest vote after the Waffle was expelled from the NDP and I voted CPC-ML, and the other was a strategic vote for Marianne Wilkinson (who had left the Tories to join the Liberals because of Mike Harris's regressive policies) in an attempt to unseat the sitting Tory, Norm Sterling, and the Harris government.

This will be the third time, and it is essentially over one issue. I do not usually believe in voting based on one issue but in this case I have an opportunity to vote for a party not afraid to raise the issue of one public education system for the province. It should be the NDP, but it is not. On this issue I even find myself agreeing with John Tory, rather than Howard Hampton, on the fact that the existing funding of Catholic religious schools only is discriminatory. Of course I disagree with John Tory's solution, which would only make things worse.

In the entire history of the province only the Green Party has had the political will to stand up for equality and public education in Ontario, and for that they will be rewarded with my vote.

Should Taxation Fund Religious Schools in Ontario

Ontario has two publicly funded school systems, one secular and one Catholic. According to the 2001 Census there are 3,935,745 people that identify themselves as “Protestant” and 3,911,760 people that identify themselves as “Catholic”. Does it not seem strange that the one religious group that gets public funding for its schools is not the group with the largest number of followers.

Of course it all goes back to history. At the time of confederation Ontario and Quebec had Protestant and Catholic school systems. “Protection of the Separate School system was a major issue of contention in the negotiations that led to Canadian confederation, due in large part to racial and religious tension between the (largely Francophone) Roman Catholic population in Canada and the Protestant majority. The issue was a subject of debate at the 1864 Quebec Conference and was finally resolved at the London Conference of 1866 with a guarantee to protect the separate school system in Quebec and Ontario.” ((Wikipedia). This was guaranteed in Section 93 of the British North America Act, now the Constitution Act. In Ontario the Protestant system evolved into the secular school system and now there is only one Protestant school board in Ontario with one school, the Penetanguishene Protestant Separate School Board.

So we now have a secular publicly funded school system and a publicly funded Catholic school system but no public funding for the small religious groups or even the larger Protestant religious group. Does this not seem at odds with the equality provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Charter states:

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

However the Charter also states:

29. Nothing in this Charter abrogates or derogates from any rights or privileges guaranteed by or under the Constitution of Canada in respect of denominational, separate or dissentient schools.


In 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that this was not a violation of the Charter primarily due to the provisions of section 93 and 29 of the Constitution.

So we have what appears to be a case of constitutionally entrenched violation of the Charter.

The United Nations human rights committee says Ontario's policy of fully funding Roman Catholic schools, while denying full funding to other religious schools, is discriminatory.

The status quo is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter of the Charter, and cannot be justified by any logical argument. The only argument presented for it seems to be that “has always been that way” and to try and change it would be politically difficult.

However, such constitutional provisions can be changed and have been changed, even in the Roman Catholic dominated province of Quebec which eliminated funding for Protestant and Roman Catholic schools systems and established language based school systems instead. Public funding of religious based schools in Newfoundland has also been eliminated.

So what we essentially have is not a constitutional issue but an issue of public policy. We can continue the discriminatory status quo or we can either extend public funding to all religious schools or provide it to none. There is no other justifiable or logical alternative.

The current policy of funding Roman Catholic schools has not been without concerns, including the teaching of evolution in science classes and creationism in religion class; the teaching of Catholic sex education and the church’s attitude to birth control; as well as the churches attitude towards gays and lesbians and it’s statement that they are sinners for simply being who they are.

Extending public funding to every religious group will not only see public funding of extremist groups within the mainstream religions, such as fundamentalist Christians and Muslims but potentially funding of groups such as Witches and Satanists. Lest I be cited for fear mongering, let me say it is not the labels we need to worry about. I am more worried about the extremists within the Christian churches than I am about the Wiccans. I have heard the bigotry, whether based on race or sexual orientation spouted by some so called Christian churches and I do not want taxpayers funding such propaganda. I am not as familiar with the extremists in other religions but I have no doubt that there are extremist Jewish, Islamic and other groups whose teachings most Canadians would not be comfortable with.

How would this be done. Who would decide what was a legitimate religious school worthy of funding. Who would police the thousands of individual independent schools to ensure they were following the provincial curriculum and were not teaching bigotry or hatred. It would simply be unworkable.

I am one of the biggest promoters of multiculturalism and religious pluralism is part of that. Canadian multiculturalism is a wonderful thing. It allows immigrants to become part of Canada without having to deny or abandon where they came from. It allows them to bring their cultures into the Canadian mosaic. It is important that they keep their cultural institutions. But the school system should be an institution that brings us all together, a place where we can learn about each other, share our cultures together as Canadians, and learn Canadian values.

It is time for a single publicly funded secular school system in Ontario. It is almost enough to make one vote Green