What would you think if a principal of a Catholic school were to reprimand a teacher for telling his students that there are only 2 genders?

What if a Catholic teacher were to tell her students that they would be promoting hate and bigotry by saying that marriage is between one man and one woman?

These things could happen if the Toronto Catholic Board folds under the latest challenge to Catholic educational rights in Ontario.

Ontario Catholic school boards have been requested to update their Codes of Conduct to include the terms “gender identity”, “gender expression”, “marital status” and “family status.” 

The practical consequences of this could be an enormous chill on the schools’ ability to teach Catholic teachings on sex and gender.

For more background, click here to read a Globe and Mail article.

What does the update look like?

The Toronto Catholic Board’s Code of Conduct includes the following statement in its standards of behavior:

All members of the school community must:
Respect and treat others fairly, regardless of, for example, race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or other

An activist teacher has requested the board to add the terms, “gender identity” etc.   According to a Ministry of Education document called PPM 128, school board Codes of Conduct should be consistent with the Provincial Code of Conduct, which contains those terms.  

The problem is that the Church is opposed to the ideology of gender theory, or the idea that gender is fluid and not grounded in human biology. The Archdiocese has said that the whole long list of terms of non-discrimination (race, ancestry, etc.) should be scrapped in favor of a simpler definition. The Archdiocese’s proposed wording is:

All members of the school community must:
Respect and treat others fairly, as children of God, created in the image and likeness of God, of infinite dignity and worth.

What can we do?

The Trustees will be voting on the wording in the next few weeks.

1. Please email, call or meet with your Trustee, Daniel Di Giorgio
   Remind him that gender theory goes against the teachings of the Catholic faith and has no place in a Catholic Code of Conduct. 

2. Ask him to vote in favor of this wording:
   All members of the school community must: Respect and treat others fairly, as children of God, created in the image and likeness of God, of infinite dignity and worth.

You can mention the possible effects of adding the terms. They could:

• make teachers reluctant to teach the Church’s teachings about gender
• subject the board to Human Rights complaints from parents whose children were taught gender theory at school
• threaten the existence of single-sex schools
• lead to the Board changing its denominational hiring practices and including teachers who openly model a “marital status” explicitly prohibited by the Gospels

Please contact Trustee Di Giorgio by October 30, 2019 and let us know by calling PAFE at 416-763-7233 or forwarding a copy of your email to [email protected].

Your trustee’s contact information is:

Daniel Di Giorgio
Ward 10: Toronto
Phone: 416-512-3410
Fax: 416-512-3214
E-Mail: [email protected]