The first reason to listen to it is that McVety sounds a little crazy. Actually, so crazy did McVety sound, that for a minute, I actually thought that he was faking it for a humour piece. But it’s not. And he wasn’t.¹

Another reason to listen to it, is that the interview is instructive. It’s instructive, in part, because McVety demonstrates common ignorance about human rights. He also demonstrates, rather conspicuously, that the values professed by the Institute of Canadian Values are repugnant. And importantly, the kind of institutional homophobia that he is defending is evidence toward a building case that it’s time to defund Catholic schools.

Context: Ontario and some anti-bullying laws

The Institute for Canadian Values is upset because the provincial government of Ontario is looking to pass laws requiring schools to create anti-bullying clubs, if students expressed an interest. This could create a situation where, if students at a Catholic school expressed an interest in a gay-straight alliance club, then the school would be required by provincial law to make space for creation of that club.²

The idea makes total sense to me. I think it’s a no-brainer. And the It Gets Better video that Dalton McGuinty posted to Youtube is worth a watch because he admits that just saying “it gets better” is not enough. That’s why it’s so important to enact policies and practices that help it to get better for queer folks.

McVety is ignorant about rights and freedoms

McVety thinks that “homosexual clubs” are an infringement of his, and others’, rights and freedoms. But the requirement of a school to create a gay-straight alliance of some kind, would not inhibit the practices of any religion.³ In this sense, it’s a little bit like having a racialized-minority club for students who get bullied about being black or First Nations. This does not inhibit the practices of any religion.

No one would be stopping religious folks from worshipping. No one would be stopping religious folks from congregating or praying or reading their sacred texts. Clubs are going to be formed so that queer youth can get the support they need in an environment where violence is sometimes only a brief moment away.

McVety doesn’t understand bullying or violence

McVety argues that clubs don’t help kids that are bullied. He argues that the clubs created to help queer students, who don’t feel safe, makes things worse and increases bullying. But he has no data, and he makes no effort to pay lip service to science. It’s not clear to me that he has any pedagogical expertise.

Part of the problem is that he lacks understanding of the very notion of bullying. When he says that he is being bullied when the Ministry of Education calls him a homophobe, he’s dead wrong. He misunderstands the power relations of bullies and he misunderstands the actual violence that bullying makes space for. For the record, I don’t know if anyone from the Ministry has actually called McVety a homophobe. He claims so.

But I think McVety deserves to be called out. The views he expressed in the interview were homophobic.⁴ Here’s why.

McVety’s comments on As It Happens were homophobic

Freedom of religion is not a freedom to teach hate. Freedom of religion is not a freedom to create a culture of hate. Whether it is hatred to blacks or women or queers, freedom of religion does not trump our common moral sense. The only reason McVety could have for being opposed to a gay-straight alliance is that it interferes with the interest of the school to promote a culture opposed to homosexuality.

McVety argues⁵ that “this legislation is going to force the Catholic Church to instill anti-Catholic values.” McVety thinks that pro-queer clubs are antithetical to Christianity. ⁶

…well the fact is that they have been able to do this in public schools, but in Catholic Schools this of course goes against the teaching of the Catholic Church. But now the Premier is going to use the heavy hand of the law and legislate Catholic classrooms and schools to have homosexual clubs and that is a violation of the separation of Church and State.⁷

If McVety is right, we need to defund Catholic schools

McVety argues that the official teaching of the Catholic Church, and Catholic schools, is that “homosexuality is a destructive process” ⁸ and that if you have “gay clubs encouraging to the contrary then, of course, this goes against the precepts of the school.”⁹

If this is true, then Catholic schools aren’t queer tolerant. That means that they are teaching hate. In that case, it’s time to stop putting taxpayers dollars towards Catholic schools. It’s time to defund hatred.

Additional thoughts

Today there is a second part to this report by As It Happens. It’s an interview with the Minister of Education, and I won’t miss it.

Some of you are no doubt laughing right now because you tend to disagree with my analysis anyway. But seriously. I was listening to cbc radio tonight, hoping to hear something intelligent about the American midterm elections and I was lucky enough to catch most of an interview with Chris Hedges. He’s a well credentialed journalist from The Nation Institute. It’s worth noting that he wrote for the NY Times which he refers to as an elitist newspaper that lies and has contributed to the mass sellout of the working class.

I recommend listening to the interview here. It has left me re-examining my mish mash of political beliefs.

Lately I find myself in conversations with folks where I seem to oscillate erratically in my opinions about when to act in principled ways and when to act strategically (read: expediently). Has Obama done a good job? Is he a hypocrite? Are the Democrats worse than the Republicans? Are they the same? Oi.

Here’s an article that I haven’t read yet, but I will: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_liberal_opportunists_made_20101025/P100/

On Peace and Non-violence, excerpt

Massey lecture for CBC – part five, Christmas Eve 1967

Peace on Earth. This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We neither have peace within or peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears cower people by day and haunt them by night. our world is sick with war. Everywhere we turn we see it’s ominous possibility. And yet my friends, a Christmas hope for peace and goodwill towards all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian hoper. If we don’t have goodwill towards men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power – wisdom born of experience that tell us that war is obsolete.

There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. But the very destructive power of modern weapons of warfare eliminates even the possibility that war may any longer serve as a negative good – so if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.

So let us this morning explore the conditions for peace. And as we explore these conditions I would like to suggest that modern man really go all out to study the meaning of non-violence, it’s philosophy and it’s strategy.

We have experimented with the meaning of nonviolence in our struggle for racial justice in the United States. But now the time has come for man to experiment with nonviolence in all areas of human conflict. And that means nonviolence on an international scale.

Now let me suggest first, that if we are going to have peace on earth our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and as long as we try the more we’re going to have war in this world. The judgement of God is upon us. And we must either learn to live together as brother or we’re going to perish together as fools. As nations and individuals we are interdependent.

I have mentioned to you before of our visit to india some years ago. it was a marvelous experience. But I say to you this morning that there were those depressing moments. But how can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his  own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night. How can  one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalks at night. more than a million sleep on the sidewalks of Bombay India every night, more than a half a million sleep on the sidewalks of Calcutta every night – they have no houses to go in, they have no beds to sleep in.

As I beheld these conditions something within me cried out, can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned? And an answer came, “oh no!” And I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars everyday to store surplus food and I said to myself, “I know where we can store that food free of charge” – in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God’s children in Asia and Africa, latin America and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night.

It really boils down to this. That all life is inter-related. we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny so that whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the inter-related structure of reality.

Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning with out being dependency on most of the world. You get up in the morning and go the bathroom and you reach for for the sponge and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. Then you go in the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning. That’s poured in your cup by a South American. Or maybe you want tea – that’s poured in your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having coco for breakfast and that’s poured in your cup by a West African. And then reach over for your toast and that’s given to you at the hands of an english speaking farmer, not to mention the bacon.

Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning you are dependent on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured. It is it’s inter-related quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the inter-related structure of all reality.

Now let me say secondly that if we are to have peace in the world, men and nation must embrace the non-violent affirmation that ends and means must cohere.

One of the great philosophical debates of history has been over the whole question of means and ends. And there have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means – that the means really aren’t important, the important thing is to get to the end you seek. So if you are seeking to develop a just society, the important thing is to get there and the means are really not important – any means that will get your there, they may be violent means, they may be untruthful means, they may be unjust means, to get to a just end. There have been those who have argued this through out history.

But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means because the means represent the ideal in the making and the end in process. And ultimately you cannot reach good end through evil means. Because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

It’s one of the strangest things that all of the great military geniuses of the world have talked about peace. The conquerors of old came killing in pursuit of peace. Alexander, Julius Ceaser, Charlemagne and Napolean, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order. Did you know that if you read Mein Kampf close enough, Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany, was for peace. The leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, president Johnson is talking eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek.

But one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that in the final analysis, ends and means must cohere because the need is pre-existent in the means. And ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

Now let me say that the next thing we must be concerned about if we are going to get peace on earth and goodwill towards men, must be the affirmation of the sacredness of all human life…

If you’ve waited a little while and it’s still not working, try this.

It got me thinking how the CBC logo has changed a little over the years. Not recognizing the butterfly I knew there were probably others that I don’t know about. And there are. I’ve included them below so you can check them out. And while they’re all very cool you can see how much more effective the simpler, more essential design is more effective. Again and again, I’m amazed at how powerful a minimalist sensibility can be.