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.

And there’s a bunch of stuff that happens around Christmas that is obviously mythological. Santa Claus is a myth.¹ Elves are a myth. This idea that Christmas is universal, is a myth. These stories are simply not true.

To this point, I don’t think anyone will argue with me.

But some people still think that Christmas is essentially and necessarily a Christian holiday. And this is where the it gets interesting. If Christmas is essentially and necessarily Christian, then we need to figure out if Christianity is mythological in order to figure out if Christmas is mythological.

So is Christianity a myth?

Well, that is an interesting question. If you gotten this far, you won’t be surprised by my initial analysis. There’s a bunch of things about Christianity that is not mythological, and there’s a bunch of stuff about Christianity that is mythological. Churches, crosses and bibles, after all, are all common physical objects in Canada. People who identify as Christians are also common and real. Christian values even shape our political and social and legal institutions. But that there is a male angel whose name is St. Peter, and he has wings and a big book, and he hangs out at these big baroque gates of heaven letting some recently deceased folks, but not all, enter… well that’s a myth. Most Christians don’t actually even believe that one to be true. Most think that’s a bit of human made imagery to help people try to understand what heaven is. Many Christians don’t even believe in angels.

But it’s not enough to say that Christianity is a myth, to simply say that some parts of Christianity are a myth. The parts that are a myth could be only a contingent part of Christianity. It would be like trying to argue that Toyotas have bad brakes when only some Toyotas have bad brakes. It’s a contingent, not a necessary truth about Toyotas. A necessary feature is a feature that every Toyota has, or more strongly, it’s a feature without which a Toyota stops being a Toyota.

In order to argue that Christianity is a myth, I would have to find a feature of Christianity that is necessary and mythological.

Ten good candidates for such a feature would be:

1. God had a son
2. God’s son was born on Earth and his name was Jesus
3. Jesus’s mother was a virgin
4. Jesus was visited by three wise men who found him by following a star
5. Jesus did a variety of magic things, like turning water into wine, walking on water and resurrecting dead folks
6. Jesus was killed (or possibly committed suicide) and three days later he rose from the grave
7. God let his son die on purpose
8. Jesus died for all of humanity
9. Jesus took away our sins through his sacrifice and now everyone can live forever, unless you’re bad
10. Jesus can still see or hear us and he loves us, especially when we bomb or shoot brown terrorists, even if we kill a few civilians now and then, as long as they’re mostly brown and don’t speak english