Homosexuals' rights don't prevail in private religious schools
Vancouver Sun – April 30, 2010
By Douglas Todd

Since Canadian society legally forbids discrimination against homosexuals, can a Vancouver religious school tell a well-liked teacher to go home for being in a lesbian relationship?

It's a thorny human rights dilemma that tears at the consciences of freedom-supporting Canadians, no matter which side of the homosexuality question they come down on.

The latest case to explode into notoriety involves Little Flower Academy music teacher Lisa Reimer, who was told this week not to return to her classroom after the Roman Catholic girls independent school learned she was a lesbian whose partner had just given birth.

Can Reimer be barred from the Catholic school on the west side of Vancouver because of her homosexual life? The answer hinges on a clash of competing democratic values.

On one hand, Reimer has a right to escape discrimination based on her sexual orientation.

On the other, the Catholic school has the right to "freedom of association," which permits members of religious and other non-profit groups to hire only people who follow their moral teachings.

Despite a widespread belief in tolerance in our culture, Canadians are slowly becoming aware of this stark anomaly in human-rights law: Privately funded religious and other charitable groups are exempt from certain anti-discrimination codes.

For instance, even though most Canadians don't agree with the Vatican's celibacy doctrines, they have to reluctantly accept that donor-funded Catholic churches have the right to hire just unmarried men as priests.

In the secular world, as well, a charitable women's organization has the right to pursue its goals by refusing to employ men. However, the case of Little Flower Academy creates an even trickier moral dilemma.

It is the ethical thicket formed when a non-profit organization discriminates against a homosexual or other protected person at the same time the organization receives funding from taxpayers.

That's what happens at Little Flower, which – like other Catholic, evangelical, Sikh, Mormon fundamentalist, Waldorf and other "independent" schools in B.C. – draws roughly 50 per cent of its operating budget from government.

Given that they're stakeholders, taxpayers can justifiably ask: Shouldn't an institution significantly funded by all citizens have to uphold the laws of the land, which forbid discrimination based on orientation (and gender)?

The executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association acknowledges it's a challenging question.

Generally, however, David Eby believes private institutions like Little Flower Academy, even while receiving $1.8 million a year from taxpayers, have the right to enforce their codes of conduct, including by barring active homosexuals.

It's why the B.C. Civil Liberties Association intervened in a landmark case on behalf of evangelical Trinity Western University in Langley.

In 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed TWU could formally ban students from engaging in gay or lesbian sex, even while the Christian school trained teachers for public school classrooms that would contain openly homosexual pupils.

Still, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which stands up for freedom even when it makes people uncomfortable, is now engaged in internal debates about where it actually stands on government funding of nonprofit organizations with controversial views.

Even though Eby personally opposes private religious schools, he would not want politicians of the day withdrawing funding from such non-profit organizations simply because they don't like their teachings, whether on abortion, ecological justice or homosexuality.

That, Eby said, could amount to a form of "censorship." Indeed, many argue the federal Conservative government is unfairly restricting freedom of thought by withdrawing funding from foreign-aid maternal health projects that include abortion.

The Little Flower case opens up difficult moral territory. Even while Eby feels duty-bound to defend the girls' school's right to discriminate against a lesbian, he acknowledged feeling bothered the Catholic school would actually do so.

Some embarrassed Canadian Catholics, whom polls show often don't accept their hierarchy's teaching that homosexual sex is a grave sin, feel similarly. Eby, 34, grew up in the Catholic Church, but said he learned to read the scriptures differently from the Vatican.

While Pope Benedict XVI believes the Bible condemns homosexuality as a grave sin, Eby is convinced the New Testament teaches people to respect, and work with, those who are different.

It was on the strength of such ethical disagreements, the civil libertarian said, that he took advantage of his own free right: To no longer count himself a member of the Catholic fold.