(LifeSiteNews) — Like Heather Mallick, Martin Regg Cohn is one of those Toronto Star columnists who displays, in addition to an airtight skull, a dazzling combination of arrogance and ignorance. A few years back, he penned a screed in which he claimed that Canadian doctors who declined to participate in practices that violate their consciences were “doing the work of the devil” and suggested that those who revealed their Christian beliefs should be kept out of medical school and instead sent to divinity school. Cohn, as it turns out, has not read much on the social consequences of requiring medical professionals to violate their consciences. That he does not understand the concept of conscience is both obvious and unsurprising.
Cohn, unsurprisingly, is at it again — and this time his column in a not-so-veiled threat aimed at Catholic schools for their refusal to publicly signal their support for his ideology: “York’s Catholic school trustees are abusing their power by refusing to raise the Pride flag. Their day of reckoning is coming.” He begins — and you cannot make this stuff up — with a Bible text: “Pride comes before a fall.” Which is indisputably true, but an odd verse to use as the lede to your column defending “Pride Month.” In his column, Cohn decries “prejudice toward the Pride flag” (a new category of sin, apparently, is bigotry toward the banners of ideologies you do not happen to share) while displaying a healthy amount of bigotry toward Canadians who disagree with him on said flag.
UPDATE (05/30/23): Major victory as York Catholic District School Board votes against raising LGBT flag
Your committment to this campaign has paid off – please continue circulating the petition far and wide, and read below about our huge victory at YCDSB thanks to people like you.
(LifeSiteNews) – During a May 29 York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) meeting, trustees voted 6-4 against flying the pro-LGBT flag atop of its schools and other buildings in celebration of so-called “Pride Month”, in a move that has been met with pleasant surprise by pro-family advocates.
While the decision brought cheers from the crowd, some angrily shouted in protest and had to be escorted out by YCDSB security.
“The Cross represents all!” Myles Vosylius, a former student at Cardinal Carter Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, tweeted, celebrating the decision.
“The cross represents all!” – Faithful Catholic attending the @YCDSB meeting tonight, where the victorious decision was made NOT to fly the ‘pride’ flag! #YCDSB #CdnPoli #OnPoli pic.twitter.com/CSNCEQbS0c
— Myles Vosylius (@TheMylesV) May 30, 2023
While the YCDSB represents a victory for faithful Catholics in York region, many Catholic school boards have caved to pressure by LGBT activists and will fly “pride flags” during the month of June. However, increasingly, Ontario parents are fighting back as hundreds of students, reportedly predominantly Muslim, stayed home earlier this month when their schools flew the flag.
Parents have also begun to speak out against LGBT agenda being promoted to their children in schools. Pro-LGBT trustee for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) Wendy Ashby recently resigned after over 3,000 parents petitioned for her ousting.
Similarly, last month, a group of young Canadians protested a school-sponsored drag queen event in front of York Mills Collegiate Institute in Toronto.
Furthermore, Campaign Life Coalition is calling for parents to keep their children home from school on June 1 to protest schools flying the “pride flag.”
“Parents need to keep up the pressure, just like this, right across the country!” Fonseca encouraged.
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As Catholics, we are taught that we must love our neighbour and treat every individual as a child of God, accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.
Parents make a clear choice when they decide that their children will attend a Catholic school. They rightly expect that trustees, principals, teachers all partners in education will ensure that Catholic teaching is presented, lived and infused in all that we do. In that regard, the appropriate symbol that represents our faith, and the inclusion and acceptance of others, is the cross, which is visible at the entrance of every Catholic school. It is the primary symbol of our Christian faith.
We have created this petition to express opposition of flying the pride flag at schools for the month of June. Our kids should not be forced to celebrate anyones sexuality, and a flag will do nothing to keep anyone more safe. Its nothing more than a symbol of sexual celebration, completely inappropriate.
Catholicism and parental rights are being threatened, and we will not allow teachers who are LGBTQ to influence our children.
We are not homophobes. We are trying to shield our children from any sexual ideologies, both gay and straight. Children are minors who have a right to a normal and innocent childhood. We are not STAKEHOLDERS. We are parents. EQUITY is not and will never be the same as EQUALITY. Inclusion means EVERYONE and the York Region Catholic District School Board & its Union members are infringing upon our religious beliefs by suffocating our children with woke political agendas & indoctrinations when they should be focusing on educating our kids!
We love all humans equally. Hate is the wrong word to describe parents feelings about the climate in schools today. Parents protesting the pride flag at school do not harbour any negative feelings towards the LGBTQ+ community. We do however feel that their rights seem to supersede everyone elses. We also believe that kids should never learn about sex at school and we condemn any classroom discussion or public display that encourages or promotes gender confusion and same sex lifestyles in a classroom setting. We also strongly condemn the nature of several library books that contain sensitive material on homosexuality and transgender issues in elementary school libraries. Similarly, we harbour no contempt for transgenders as individuals but their insistence on using female-only spaces is invasive.
The promotion of a pride sticker and the likelihood that a flag will go up in June at all schools suggests a particular political agenda, which warrants examination. Concern about alleged incidents of bullying directed at the LGBTQ community within schools has been raised. However when requesting specific information on the actual number of such reports, it was communicated that the data is currently confidential and not publicly available. Despite clarifying that only the number of incidents was desired, the same response was given.
The lack of transparency and information provided by the York Region Catholic District School Board concerning alleged incidents combined with these extreme campaigns using safe space stickers to promote political agendas, raises necessary questions about their motives. Despite facing opposition from relevant individuals, including the Archbishop of Toronto and Cardinal Collins, who have both explicitly expressed their disapproval of such displays, the union and its members have vehemently insisted the stickers remain.
We must stand up against this before the Board caves to the pressure of political correctness and decide to raise the pride flag too.
Please share this. We must get as many signatures as possible before May 20th so that we may present a united front at this months meeting with this petition in hand that will speak for itself and will represent all of us.
Thank you.
Sheree D
The writing is nearly as bad as the argumentation, but it is worth breaking down:
By refusing to raise the Pride flag at their main office, Catholic school trustees in York Region are giving Ontario a lesson in the politics of religious intolerance and intransigence. When blind faith closes its eyes to LGBTQ students, it leads to a dead end.
“The flag does not align with our faith,” argued board chair Frank Alexander. “We stand for our faith, we stand for Christ.”
Not so simple. It is not merely a matter of personal faith, for it also matters how the public feels.
York’s Catholic trustees are caught up in a catechism wrapped in a contradiction inside an anachronism. The trouble with their regressive and aggressive stand is not just that it harms LGBTQ students, but that it hurts the good name of Catholic educators everywhere ― the vast majority of whom are broadly supportive of Pride flags and GSAs.
Apparently to Cohn — and one can almost imagine him chuckling to himself as he wrote his “catechism” line — Catholic trustees remaining consistent with the two-millennia-old teachings of their church need to ignore the “matter of personal faith” based on “how the public feels.” He also asserts, completely without evidence, that declining to fly a flag over an office building “harms LGBTQ students,” which it most certainly does not. This decision, says Cohn, was made by “rogue Catholic trustees” when in fact the opposite is true — when Catholic trustees decide to make decisions completely contrary to the Catholic faith, one could call that “rogue.” But don’t let facts stand in the way — Cohn claims that now “Catholics are essentially in a majority,” which is completely false by any measurable metric.
Cohn noted that, in his view, the time has come to defund Ontario’s Catholic schools and merge them with other school boards to ensure that everyone is herded into line. The fact that not every single school celebrates his worldview (while he regularly trashes the worldviews of others) is, to Cohn, unacceptable. He notes that Education Minister Stephen Lecce, a member of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government (lol), is on his side, sending a memo to all school boards ordering that “all students — most especially 2sLGBTQ+ students — feel supported, reflected in their schools … That includes celebrating Pride.” Or else, adds Cohn. The way to “prevail” over Catholic educators, he writes, “is to remind them … that the constitutional is merely political and temporal.” Cohn suggests that the argument for defunding Catholic schools is a simple one:
The argument should not be about saving souls versus saving dollars, because reducing duplication is not the way to win hearts and minds. The more compelling case is that Ontario must truly reflect the diversity of its religiosity, by enacting true unity in our schools — educating and integrating people of all persuasions and faiths in a single public system (with other believers free to fund their own systems by opting out).
Goodwill has gotten Ontario a long way, but over time we must find the political will to merge and modernize our education system. Without a new framework, with clear rules and rights, our students will remain pawns in recurring political conflicts under the guise of traditional religious schisms.
The version of diversity promoted by folks like Cohn is genuinely amusing. Diversity is important — so long as we all genuflect to the same ideological flag representing the same values he himself holds, because he says so. It is not bigoted to claim that an entire religious group holds the wrong values (values held by many other religious groups in Canada, including the Muslim community, the Sikh community, the Hindu community, and the Orthodox Jewish community, for starters) — but it is bigoted if you don’t publicly declare your support for Cohn’s preferred cause and political agenda.
Pride does, indeed, come before a fall.
