Canadian Judge Forces Catholic School to Allow Homosexual Prom Date     5/16/2002 Canadian Judge Forces Catholic School to Allow Homosexual Prom Date Judge Cites ‘Dignity’ of Student, Interprets ‘Catholic Dogma’ for Church By Allyson Smith In a stunning blow to religious freedom, a Canadian judge last week forced a Catholic high school district to allow a homosexual prom date, in violation of the district’s mandate to uphold church teaching against homosexual acts. Both sides have vowed to take the case all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. On May 10, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert MacKinnon issued an interlocutory (interim) injunction restraining the Durham Catholic district school board “from preventing or impeding Marc Hall from attending his high school Prom with his boyfriend.” Hall, a 17-year-old senior at Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic High School in Oshawa, filed suit against the district after it upheld the school’s refusal to let Hall take Jean-Paul Dumond, 21, to the dance. A Toronto Star photograph showed the spiked-haired Hall, dressed in a white tux, happily attending the prom holding hands with his male “date” Dumond, dressed in a black tux. “It is our hope that this case is immediately appealed, and that this judgment is squashed at the next level of court,” said Brian Rushfeldt, executive director of the Canada Family Action Coalition, a pro-family group. MacKinnon’s decision followed two days of hearings in which Hall’s attorney, David Corbett, argued that the district’s refusal to let Hall and Dumond attend the prom together violated the Ontario Human Rights Code, the Education Act and the provincial Code of Conduct, according to The Toronto Star. EGALE Canada, a homosexual pressure group, reported that Corbett said that the Catholic Church’s and the school board’s “religious view of what constitutes discrimination simply does not correspond with the legal view of what constitutes discrimination” and that schools that “take public money must adhere to certain standards,” including “complying with the Human Rights Code, treating others fairly regardless of factors such as race, religion and sexual orientation, and respecting the rights of others.” Durham attorney Peter Lauwers argued that the Canadian Constitution “provides absolute protection for religious decisions by denominational schools” and that “the Board’s decision is a constitutionally protected religious decision, because being Catholic infuses all aspects of their lives, including the ability to require that students abide by the teachings of the faith,” according to the EGALE report. Lauwers told the court, “From a Roman Catholic perspective, [Hall] sets a bad example to others. We cannot approve that.” Furthermore, Lauwers said that Hall “chose to attend a Catholic school, which carries with it an expectation of moral conformity. Instead, he wants to force the Catholic community to adapt to him. If he doesn’t like the values of the Church, he can go.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church distinguishes homosexual urges from homosexual acts. While stressing respect and compassion for people who suffer from homosexual attraction, the Church unequivocally condemns homosexual behavior. CATHOLIC TEACHERS ASSOCIATION DEFENDS HOMOSEXUAL Lauwers argued that Hall’s taking Dumond as a “date” to the prom qualified as homosexual behavior. His argument was undermined, however, by a friend of the court submission from the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association that said that “within the Catholic community there is a diversity of opinion on the care to be accorded to lesbian and gay students, nor is there a clear definition of what it means to be ‘chaste’ or what constitutes inappropriate sexual conduct.” In his ruling, issued only hours before the prom was scheduled to begin, Judge MacKinnon came down squarely on the side of Hall and his homosexual support coalition, saying, “The social history evidence before me clearly discloses that gay men and lesbian women have been treated as less worthy and less valued than other members of society. Canadian law has accepted that homosexuality is not a mental illness or a crime but rather an innate characteristic not easily susceptible to change.” Forbidding Hall to attend the prom with Dumond, wrote MacKinnon, “constitutes a serious and irreparable injury to Mr. Hall as well as a serious affront to his dignity.” The judge went on to erroneously equate homosexual urges with homosexual identity by saying, “Mark Hall is a Roman Catholic Canadian trying to be himself. He is gay.” Displaying a profound ignorance of Church teaching, MacKinnon offered this justification for his decision: “Nowhere … do I find documentary evidence that establishes that same-sex dancing is sinful or sexual under Catholic dogma.” While acknowledging that “Mr. Hall has a duty to accord to others who do not share his orientation the respect that they, with their religious values and beliefs, are due,” MacKinnon also said that “the Principal and the Board have a duty to accord to Mr. Hall the respect that he is due as he attends the Prom with his date, his classmates and their dates” — a definition of “respect” that was apparently sufficient to trump the school district’s right to uphold authentic Church teaching. ANOTHER HOMOSEXUAL ‘HERO’ The Toronto Star hailed MacKinnon’s decision as “a major court victory for Catholic students.” Attorney Lauwers, however, called it “bad law,” and the school board issued a press release expressing extreme disappointment with the court’s ruling. “It’s important to understand that Marc has been welcome to attend the prom all along. That was never an issue,” said board chairman Mary Ann Martin. “The issue for the Durham Catholic District School Board has been, and still is, Marc’s attendance at the prom with his choice of a same sex date. That’s where we drew the line.” According to the press release, Martin told reporters that Catholic schools differ from other publicly funded schools in that the Catholic school system exists to promote the knowledge and practice of Catholic values and beliefs. “The responsibility of a Catholic School Board is to operate Catholic schools,” said Martin. “We must take matters of faith into account in how we operate our schools. We must take matters of faith into account in overseeing the conduct of the children in our care. The exercise of a homosexual lifestyle involving romantic activities such as dating is not consistent with Catholic beliefs and values. It is something we simply cannot condone or promote.” Canada’s Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) also condemned MacKinnon’s decision. In a May 14 interview, CCRL spokesman Michael Connell said, “This case represents the embodiment of a huge cultural struggle in that this young 17-year-old student is trying to reconcile a ‘gay’ identity with a Roman Catholic identity, but he won’t succeed because it can’t be done. The Church recognizes that the commandment to love God, self and neighbor is irreconcilable with an identity that embraces the inclination toward sinful behavior.” “Initially,” said Connell, “this was a story about a boy in a Catholic high school who needed to hear the loving, legitimate teachings of the Catholic Church, but he apparently didn’t get them. Instead, he got a version that was dramatically reduced to accommodate homosexuality. His teachers apparently failed to demonstrate to him what differentiates homosexual orientation from homosexual acts. So we end up with a kid who roots his primary identity in his sexual orientation — and thus ends up with an identity that is rooted outside his Catholic faith in something other than God.” COURTS DON’T UNDERSTAND CHURCH Connell said that Judge MacKinnon “bought the argument that there are a plurality of positions within the Church on the pastoral care of homosexuals, but he didn’t have the right model of the teaching Church. “The courts and society at large don’t believe in the immortality of the human soul, or the mandate of the Church, so they can’t understand that the school is tasked with caring for Marc Hall’s spiritual health. That’s why they can’t understand why the board made the decision it did.” Connell concluded, “We need to remind people to root their identity in their Catholicism. I don’t think Catholic Canadians realize that this judge’s decision impacts their fundamental religious rights — or if they do recognize it, they’re not expressing any outrage.” This is not the first case to threaten Canadians’ religious freedom. In 1998, in the case Vriend vs. the Alberta Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Alberta Individual Rights Protection Act violated the federal Charter of Rights and Freedom (the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Constitution) because it specifically excluded protection based on “sexual orientation.” (The province of Alberta does not have a “gay rights” law.) The case involved King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta, run by the Christian Reformed Church, which fired a homosexual activist named Delwin Vriend. The court trumped the province’s law by “reading into” the existing law a clause giving equal rights for persons based on “sexual orientation.” The result of that ruling, said Rushfeldt of the Canada Family Action Coalition, is that “individual laws in Alberta are now being challenged — for example, pension laws. We recently had a case come up with a homosexual partner claiming rights to the estate of his dead partner, even though the partner had been previously married with children. Healthcare providers are probably going to be forced to include homosexual partners. … We’ve opened this thing up so far and wide that it’s out of control.” Allyson Smith, a regular contributor to Culture & Family Report, is a freelance writer based in San Diego, California, who reports for the lay Catholic newspaper San Diego News Notes.