“Unexpected legal implications”?


Well slap my side and roast me for dinner. Those two Baptist schools that are defying Bill 10, a law which compels all schools to form a Gay-Straight or Queer-Straight Alliance if the students request one, have given the Education Minister David Eggen some “unexpected legal implications.

For more than two months, Education Minister David Eggen has had a copy of a report and recommendations from inquirer Dan Scott, whom Eggen hired to investigate two Edmonton-area private schools.

“Yes, we are working with it, but it’s more complicated than we had originally foreseen,” Eggen said Wednesday.

Gee, you’re just now figuring out the finer details of entrusting a god damn cult with the public education of our children?! Fuck me, Minister, it’s a little early in 2017 to be awarding Understatement of the Year, but you are off to a smashing start!

In response, Eggen demanded a written promise from Coldwell to comply with laws unanimously approved by the legislature in 2015 that protect gender identity and expression as grounds for protection from discrimination, and compelling schools to help students organize a support group for LGBTQ students when they ask for one.

Eggen then received a letter from the school board’s lawyer that the minister won’t discuss.

The minister appointed Scott, a lawyer, to study the schools’ policies, documents and handbooks, and interview students, staff and families, to see if they are in line with the law.

Although he’s had the report in hand since December, Eggen would not divulge its conclusions or recommendations.

“It extends past just the individual case. The legal complexities that have come to light with this particular case have to have larger implications, so that’s about as far as I want to say about it right now,” Eggen said. “We’re working hard, because I want to make sure we get it right, and we want to make sure that we’re sending a safe and caring message right across every school.”

The “legal complexities” are thus:

  • Alberta’s federation with Canada back in the good ol’ days enshrined Catholic participation in government as a means of warding off Protestant persecution of Catholics.
  • We’ve since matured and developed a human rights code that says you can’t be a piece of shit to people just because they’re Queer.
  • Catholics continue to be pieces of shit to people just because they’re Queer.

Funnily enough, the United Nations awarded Canada a failing grade on separation of church and state, pointing to our numerous publicly funded religious schools.

In other words, David Eggen is wandering into a minefield that secular and queer Canadians have been pointing out for fracking decades: Our human rights codes and our tolerance of oppressive religious beliefs contradict each other, and at some point one has to be ruled subordinate to another.

-Shiv