It is perhaps ironic that legislation purporting to combat bullying is being advanced by the biggest bully of them all – government – as the progressives in Ontario are busy drafting Bill 13 to force Catholic schools to set-up “gay-straight alliance clubs” within their institutions.
Although no formal apology was ever issued, Superintendent of the Waterloo Region District School Board commented to media, “We do work hand in hand with families because we co-parent”(1). The head of the local child and family services agency, Alison Scott, also commented to reporters that “She would do everything the same way tomorrow”(2). If ever we needed a stark example of the itchy trigger finger of the nanny state, its arrogance and willingness to unleash naked force against us, the Sansome case is it. If it seems the bureaucracy is unrepentant that’s because it is, and Bill 13 is merely an extension of this attitude, that we are the government and we have every right to parent your child as you do. How have we come to this? How is it that we have been utterly subjugated and stripped of our right to protection from the brutality of the state? Sadly, Bill 13 and the Sansome case are but two examples of the tyranny of progressivism, Marxism and statism that are consuming our once-free society.
Statists and progressives seek to utterly control and dominate every aspect of our lives
Statists and progressives seek to utterly control and dominate every aspect of our lives, be it the cars we drive, the foods we eat, the appliances we use, how much power we consume, which doctor cares for us or who we can hire if we are an employer. Even our thoughts and speech are controlled according to whichever politically correct view suits the current and temporary upstart politician looking for re-election. But when the state imposes and interjects itself between us, our children and our God, we must draw an impassable line. To utterly submit to a state that seeks to dominate our bodies, minds and spirit – as Marxist ideology seeks to do - is to surrender our fundamental freedom, morality and spirituality to suit a superficial and ideologically driven agenda. Such a mindset runs contrary to any measure of human rights and dignity, not only on a common sense or empirical level, but also according to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; a document which purports to protect individual freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought, belief, expression and opinion, and freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
But as all bullies do they heap injury upon injury, injustice upon injustice on their weaker victims. Most conscientious Christian parents – as well as many non-religious ones – are deeply concerned with the abysmal state of our bloated and dysfunctional government-run public education system. Reports of under-performance within government-run schools are rampant and the level of remedial classes taken by children entering universities from high schools is reaching epidemic proportions. One has to wonder what children are learning in their first 12 years in the public school system since they are utterly lacking even basic reading, writing and math skills once they graduate to university. Desperate parents are forced to rescue their children from the public school system, in order to give them the best chance for success and a bright future, in spite of the many barriers that government puts up.
Parents who choose to educate their children privately or at home make tremendous financial and time investments. Ontario currently spends an astonishing $75B annually on education, or about $9,500(3) per student; a cost that all parents must pay, regardless of whether their children use the system or not. So on top of the criminal level of taxes that alternative education parents must shoulder – while getting absolutely no value in return – they must also pay annual private tuition fees that can run from $3,000 to $12,000 or more annually. Clearly this is a burden, especially for families of modest income. In addition, many parents spend a tremendous amount of time transporting their children to private schools since no bus system exists, and many private schools are located far away from student homes. The situation for home schooling is even worse since it requires parents to forgo working in order to spend the six hours a day teaching their children. In spite of the crushing costs, many parents, even those with modest incomes, willingly make the sacrifice since enrolling their children in the broken public system is simply unacceptable.
Why is it so outrageous that conservative, religious parents want to educate their children according to their deeply held morals and beliefs?
One has to ask, why is it so outrageous that conservative, religious parents want to educate their children according to their deeply held morals and beliefs? Isn’t this the most basic and fundamental right that every parent should have? Why must statists impose the will of a tiny – and arbitrary - minority on these parents when homosexuality runs contrary to their deeply held beliefs? Statists and progressives detest the fact that Christian teachings have always, and always will, be fundamentally opposed to homosexuality. And rather than accepting and respecting the wishes of religious parents, progressives seek to impose their will and destroy the familial bonds and cohesion that religion brings to the homes of Christians. What’s next, forcing Muslim religious schools to teach Christianity? Or why not force homosexuals and atheists to study Christian theology? Who decides which rights have primacy?
But it is the will of the statist and progressive, to fundamental transform our society according to political correctness and collectivist ideologies. Look how politics utterly fails when managing public works – has building a road or school ever come in on budget or on schedule? Look at the horrible state of our justice system, our health system, the public schools and the economy. It seems that everything government touches is a disaster. Yet we are to trust this small cabal of temporary, politically motivated oligarchs to dictate to us how we should live, what we are allowed and not allowed to teach our children, and how we practice our religion? Perhaps such a state of affairs was acceptable in Stalin’s Russia, in Mao’s China, or in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and look where that lead. But when similar ideologies foment in Western societies, there is cause for great concern. Are Christian parents teaching their kids to be violent, to be anarchist, bigots and haters? Of course not, rather, they are passing down the very traditions and values that have built Canada into the wondrous and tolerant society that it is. Sadly these values are slowly being chipped away as Canada is starting to resemble some third-rate tin pot dictatorship.
Ontario is a province that has already legalized bawdy houses and prostitution
Ontario is a province that has already legalized bawdy houses and prostitution. Ontario schools already promote alternative lifestyles, promiscuity, birth control and liberalized attitudes towards the traditional definition of family and marriage. The public school systems have already become little more than propaganda and Marxist indoctrination mills; capitalism is vilified, environmental hysteria, global citizenship, open borders, government and unfettered multiculturalism are promoted all with a healthy helping of liberal guilt and self loathing. To many parents, like all government programs, the public school systems have become little more than rackets and profit centres for powerful unions and bureaucrats, where children are seen as little more than chips to be bargained with at contract time. And perhaps the biggest indignity of all, we are forced to hand over a great deal of our private property, under the penalty of incarceration or worse, to pay for the stinking system. It is because of the politicizing of the school system, its unaccountability, poor performance and the ever-growing promotion of anti-family, secular and liberalized sexual attitudes within schools that force conservative and Christian parents to shoulder the enormous costs of alternative schooling. Yet the statists and progressives are loath to let go of their power over these individuals and they seek to impose their will through draconian measures such as Bill 13.
Whenever the mastermind progressives in government want to foist their latest “save the world using other people’s money” initiative they are compelled to manufacture a crisis to get unsuspecting taxpayers to go along. Bill 13 is just the latest issue du jour that gives progressives de facto justification to run rough shod over the rights of certain groups to appease special interests. The sponsors of Bill 13 would have us belief that Christians are all hard-core homophobes and that bullying of gay students has reached such epidemic proportions in private and Christian schools that only the good hand of government can rescue us from ourselves. And so the finger waving, guilt and mass hysteria rolls along in full force in spite of there being absolutely no empirical data to support the crisis claim. Charles Lewis and Colin Perkel, in their May 25, 2012 National Post article summed it up,
“The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has also argued that there are no statistics to backup the idea that gay students need special attention. Statistics on bullying are not easy to come by. However, in 2006 the Toronto District School Board conducted a study to determine causes of bullying. The most cited reason was “body image” (38% in grades 7 to 8; 27% in grades 9 to 12), followed by grades or marks (17% and 12% respectively), and 7% in all grades noted language as a cause. The next three categories at 5% or lower were gender, religion and income.”
Church groups were feeding the poor and hungry, sheltering the destitute and saving orphans long before any enterprising politician got the idea of cashing in on the misery
Church groups were feeding the poor and hungry, sheltering the destitute and saving orphans long before any enterprising politician got the idea of cashing in on the misery. These church groups did a far better job than any government and today private Christian schools outperform their government counterparts in spite of the endless resources and near monopoly that government has over education. But the progressive’s lust for control and unfettered power is boundless, and all Canadians must act now to put government back in its rightful place. Bill 13 represents an issue that is bigger than just a small group of Christians and private schools being pushed around by a tyrannical government. It lays bare the progressive dogma that the end justifies the means, that the quest for radical egalitarian utopia justifies the use of force against anyone who dares to stand in the way of so-called progress. Christians, like the American founders, understand that rights are inalienable and God-given, that no politician, bureaucrat or special interest can bestow – or by extension take away – a person’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Consequently, to the Ontario government and to the special interests that are pulling their strings we have this message; keep your hands off our kids and you will never come between us, our children, our faith and our God.
- Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun, May 29, 2012
- Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun, May 29, 2012
- Ontario Federation of Independent Schools
