Curriculum fight moves to the picket line.

Ottawa - The new AIDS curriculum to be introduced into Ontario Catholic schools has come up against stiff opposition. In Ottawa, The Citizen kept the public at large informed with letters and articles back and forth, while radio talk shows added their bit. Charges ranged from homosexual propaganda and a distortion of Catholic teaching to a "threat to the innocence of the young" and the argument that the responsibility for discussing these matters belongs to the family, not the school.

Despite this opposition, the program continues to receive support from Catholic trustees, the local Archbishop and a strange alliance of homosexual activists, "humanists" and Catholic dissidents. One Catholic critic of the curriculum, Mrs. Sylvia MacEachern, was even told by the Ottawa-Carleton Police Hate Crimes Unit that she is under investigation.

At the centre of the furore is AIDS: a Catholic Education Approach to HIV, supposed to be introduced into all Catholic schools in Ontario by the end of 1998. In Ottawa and in Toronto's Dufferin-Peel district it was supposed to have started this spring (see related story page 23). AIDS consists of three lesson-sessions per year from kindergarten to grade twelve. It was designed by the American National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) and slightly revised by Toronto's Institute for Catholic Education (ICE). The program carries the stamp of approval of Bishop James Doyle of Peterborough on behalf of the Ontario Conference of Bishops.

This approval by one bishop means that other bishops, very few of whom are likely to have read the program, automatically rally in support and solidarity. After that, everyone else falls into lockstep, trustees, supervisors, administrators, teachers, all echoing the refrain that "the bishops have approved it" (e.g., "AIDS program is church-approved," Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 27).

Main opposition to program

The main opposition to the curriculum has come from parents and interested Catholics in Ottawa, Toronto and Oshawa. There has been a strongly-worded letter sent by REAL Women of Canada to the Ottawa-Carleton board. Formal presentations requesting withdrawal of the program have come from the Ottawa-based St. Brigid's Association and a group represented by Mr. Jim Duffy in Brampton, ON. (For Duffy's critique, see Catholic Insight, November, 1997, pp. 20-22, and page 23 of this issue). The entire curriculum, accompanied by detailed, point-by-point critiques of its contents, has been sent to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which has acknowledged receipt.

John Podgorski leads board defence

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board's defence of the curriculum has been led by John Podgorski, co-ordinator of religious education and family life. In late January and early February, Podgorski hosted several school presentations to local parents. The information was primarily medical and sociological in content, with overhead diagrams and photographs of the virus as well as figures on the number of AIDS cases reported world-wide.

The presentations appeared designed to distance AIDS from its largely homosexual base in North America. For example, a large overhead photograph of a family devastated by AIDS was shown to parents, the father having become infected from a blood transfusion. And speaking on a local open line radio show in defence of what he was conveying to parents, Podgorski suggested that homosexuals do not choose their orientation.

Accompanying Podgorski for most of the presentations were board representative Heather Reid, a local diocesan liturgy advisor, and Bernadette Roy, a former teacher and trustee now infected by the virus she contracted from her husband, who was infected through a blood transfusion. Roy spoke to parents of her experience of AIDS and said she supported the program because it would inform the young about the disease. She'd already given "hundreds and hundreds of AIDS presentations to the various high schools, starting with Grade 7," she said. She claims to know a homosexual by sight, even a little boy in a Grade 3 class. Her best friend is a homosexual, she stated.

One of the first meetings got quite rowdy, with some people critical of the program shouting questions from the floor. Thereupon the principals of guest schools forbade the passing out of nonboard-approved literature, refused questions from some protesters, and severely limited question time. That meant, of course, that they prevented parents from hearing about the criticisms. At the public meeting held on February 10, AIDS-curriculum opponents wore adhesive tape over their mouths in protest. This led the board to abandon the meetings in favour of mailing parents their own information packages. Podgorski also declined a formal public debate.

Public dispute

The dispute heated up, with letters back and forth in the Ottawa Citizen. Needless to say, homosexual activists defended the curriculum. The one who called Catholic opponents "homophobes" is the same man who posts messages on the Internet asking teens to have sex with himself and his dog. Two doctors and their two research assistants claimed that homosexual behaviour is irrelevant to the spread of HIV/AIDS (Dec. 19). Others included among the dozen or so letter-writers were Colin Downie, president of the Humanist Association of Canada (founded by abortionist Henry Morgentaler), and Saundra Glynn, spokeswoman for the dissident "Catholics of Vision" and co-foundress of the Coalition of Concerned Canadian Catholics (CCCC), which has the homosexual dissident group Dignity Canada as one of its members. On March 20 Capital Xtra, Ottawa's depraved homosexual monthly newspaper, wrote a glowing review of the program.

The Archbishop

One important participant in the public controversy was Most Rev. Marcel Gervais, Archbishop of Ottawa. He took to the radio airwaves and authored an article in the Ottawa Citizen (Feb. 18) in defence of the program. "What I find particularly distressing," he wrote, "is that the opponents of AIDS: A Catholic Educational Approach to HIV, continue to equate education about this disease with the promotion of homosexuality." The program, he said, describes "homosexual genital activity" as "morally unacceptable."

Following the line taken by the publishers of the program, Toronto's ICE, which describes AIDS in the curriculum as "a profound social, moral and medical crisis in virtually every facet of society," the Archbishop described it as responsible for "killing millions of people." Without proof or figures, the Archbishop stated, "It is now necessary to introduce accurate information within a Catholic moral framework to younger students who are constantly exposed to conflicting ideas about HIV and AIDS long before they reach Grade 7."

Appearing on CHRI radio, the Archbishop thought that young people must be helped to "have an empathetic view about the sickness." "We are not trying to deliberately seduce and warp our children," he said.

Despite these assertions, there remains an air of unreality about the episcopal defence of the AIDS curriculum, which avoided answering any of the detailed criticisms. In a July 16, 1997 letter, for example, Gervais evaded a question about why the curriculum suggests that PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) be brought into the schools to talk to children. His answer: "To my knowledge PFLAG members have not been invited into our schools." The curriculum "may not be a perfect program," he added, but it is "the Church's best effort at this time." (Editor: Just such an invitation occurred during an "anti-homophobia" workshop for some 60 Catholic teachers in Toronto; see "How to corrupt boldly," C.I., May 1994, pp. 7-9).

To an observation that the curriculum presents improper materials glorifying homosexuals, the Archbishop responded that the program is "addressed to our Catholic youth, all of whom are struggling with their sexual identity." In addition to his not answering the point at hand one may ask: where is the evidence for this strange statement, that all youths are having problems? And is it not our duty to strive to end their "struggle" through sound Catholic teaching?

Auxiliary Bishop Fred Colli writes with similar evasiveness about the reality of the classroom. In a September 23, 1997 letter to two parents, he responded to a charge that the teacher's manual contains an unacceptable pro-homosexuality magazine article, with the statement that the article "is given to teachers, not to encourage homosexual behaviour but to deal with the issue of discrimination - always to be situated in a Catholic context."

The article in question, "The Great Divide," is by Marcia Kaye from Canadian Living Magazine, November 1993. It portrays Lynn Johnston, a cartoonist and defender of homosexuality, as a heroine. One of her cartoons alleges that aboriginal peoples consider homosexuals "blessed with both male and female spirits." Bishop Colli's comment on this make-believe statement: this "interpretation of homosexuality by some aboriginal peoples is simply a matter of fact, pertaining to native culture."

Focus of Ottawa protest

Those who oppose the AIDS curriculum are aware of the inroads the propaganda apparatus has made into the Catholic community, not least among teachers. In 1994 a group within OECTA, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, encouraged then Justice Minister Allan Rock to place "sexual orientation" in the Canada Human Rights Act. In March of 1995 OECTA itself adopted its own resolution regarding the rights of homosexuals in Catholic schools, "rights" not in accord with Catholic teaching.

In Ottawa the opposition is spearheaded by the St. Brigid's Association, a group of Catholics concerned about laxity in Catholic liturgy, morals and education. The group's spokeswoman, Sylvia MacEachern, calls the curriculum "unadulterated homosexual propaganda" and "straight social engineering." Speaking on an open-line Ottawa radio program that preceded the picketing of one of the board presentations, she claimed that the curriculum "introduces children to language and behaviour which a child, in his or her wildest dreams, could not conjure up."

Citing the teacher's manual, she points out that the curriculum calls for discussion by 15-year-old children of sodomy (not, of course, designated under that name) and oral sex. It gives teachers the go-ahead to discuss sexual transmission of HIV as early as Grade 3, if a student brings up the question. "For many, many years," MacEachern says, "the homosexual lobby group had no access (to schools) and no lever to gain sympathy. People once upon a time in this country rightly understood that certain sexual behaviour was deviant." But now the curriculum's teacher manual distorts Church teaching by equating homosexuality with race and sex, and suggests that teachers invite a homosexual advocacy group into the classroom.

PFLAG

Judy Anderson, President of the Ontario Chapter of REAL Women of Canada, echoes MacEachern's fear concerning PFLAG, but goes into more detail. PFLAG, she pointed out, is advertised in the "support" section of an Ottawa gay and lesbian business directory, along with such groups as "Lesbian Gay Bi Youth Line" and "Sex Addicts Anonymous." The business directory is published by Pink Triangle Press, on whose board one finds male prostitute and paedophilia advocate Gerald Hannon, and Ken Popert, a homosexual activist who objected to the North American Man Boy Love Association - a propaedophile group - being expelled from the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

Citing a past incident when an HIV-infected couple was invited into a local Ottawa high school and urged students to practice "safe sex," Anderson questioned how teachers could be expected to control situations in which, as the manual suggests, people with AIDS or AIDS counsellors are to be invited into schools.

Zeroing in on the fact that the AIDS curriculum urges children to participate in "community organized events" that centre on AIDS, she warned that there is a "strong likelihood" that students "will come into direct contact with homosexual activists who would not only regard homosexual activity as a normal expression of sexuality, but who might also support the notion that paedophiles are a misunderstood minority." (In 1994 one of the largest homosexual activist groups in Canada, the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario, came out with a paper promoting paedophilia.)

Anderson also cites the disturbing case of Matthew McGowan, an ex-counsellor at a Toronto drop-in centre called Maggies, who was charged with making sexually explicit videos involving young boys. "Maggies," she wrote, "is one of the many community organizations to which the Toronto Board of Education's human sexuality counsellors can refer minor students without parental knowledge or consent."

A comment by doctors

The Ottawa Citizen carried several detailed letters from Ottawa pro-life physicians Dr. Andre Lafrance and Dr. Jeanne Ferrari, the latter of whom has doctorates in medicine, pharmacy and canon law.

Dr. Ferrari took strong issue with the authors of the AIDS manual for insisting that AIDS is not a homosexual disease: "It is generally accepted that AIDS was introduced into the blood pool by homosexuals, and the homosexual community is still a reservoir of the disease" (Oct. 18). She also accused "a small but significant group" within the (North American) "Catholic hierarchy" of "trying to promote the idea that homosexuality is a genetic defect, something that one `is born with'." (Editor's note: the 1997 revision of the Catechism corrects a similar potential interpretation of the original 1992 text. See C.I., Nov. '97, p. 18.)

Dr. Ferrari's point about homosexual activity as a major source of AIDS was echoed by Dr. Lafrance, who presented the latest figures from AIDS in Canada - Quarterly Surveillance Update, August, 1997. Despite the activity of so-called bisexuals, these figures show that 66.7% of AIDS cases in Canada occur amongst men who have "sex" with men; 7.6% amongst injection drug users; and 7.6% amongst men who do both. That makes for 74.3%, without saying anything about how the AIDS virus came to contaminate the blood supply which has infected so many innocent bystanders.

Parent apathy and board reaction

Given the strong stand of Archbishop Gervais and the endorsement of the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops, it seems unlikely that the new AIDS curriculum will be withdrawn from Ontario schools without direct intervention from Rome. Despite the high media visibility of the protest in Ottawa, few parents have the energy to investigate such matters, especially when they are not given the views of those who oppose it.

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic Board, which refused a public debate and curtailed questions, blasted the St. Brigid's Association, accusing it of "unproductive and disruptive behaviour." In a February 18, 1998 letter, board chairman Ronald Larkin claimed that members of the audience and board staff "have been unduly harassed by members of your organization."

The Archbishop says that St. Brigid's is "not an officially-recognized Catholic organization." This is hardly relevant to the validity of their analysis of the AIDS curriculum. In fact, it is all too often those "on the inside" who are prepared to defend the indefensible, leaving it to "outsiders" to expose the deficiencies.

Robert Eady is a widely-published Catholic commentator and writer. He lives with his wife and two children in Kanata, Ontario.