McGuinty’s Bold Moves

The photos are long lost now but I wish I still had them.  Then-Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty and his team in the CHML Hamilton studios as he succumbed to an hour-long interview and phone-in on my talk show.  It’s not because I’m his fan or supporter or anything but it was a moment in time that I experienced. 

They all wore red Liberal Team Dalton golf shirts and did everything except form a pyramid in their pre-show warm-up.  Back then he was the young, fresh-faced premier wannabe and full of lofty, exciting ideas as anyone is when they don’t have to actually back them up.

Now as our third-term (albeit minority, this time) Premier, McGuinty has his sights set on eliminating bullying in the province’s schools.  And he’s adamant that where gay children are being beaten up and humiliated because of their sexual orientation, there must be education on alternative lifestyles.  He also requires that all schools allow these picked-on kids to form a “gay club” if they so desire.  The religious groups are after him now saying how dare he insist upon an aspect of life that they don’t believe in, as if gays are fabled fairies, pun intended.  Now Catholics are banding together to give him what-for because he’s Catholic.  Not all Catholics though.  London’s Catholic School Board has declared its support for the initiative.

Polls show most people don’t want religion in schools and they definitely don’t want it guiding our government.  As a non-parent I pay taxes toward public schools in our city – as I should because I have a responsibility to future generations – but I’ll be darned if I would be happy about a dime of it going toward any religious education.  They are two separate things.  One is based expanding your knowledge so you can grow up and make something of yourself and the other is based on faith.  Faith is not knowledge by its very definition.  Faith is for home and church and family life, it’s not to black out scientific fact or take up time otherwise spent on math or reading.

My idea of a school is where everyone is free to live and learn.  That means those kids who are sick to their stomachs every morning at the thought of being threatened or beaten up, would be made to feel and actually be safe.   If that means forming a little club where they can gather, so be it.  And if it happens to be homosexuality that makes them alike, then so be it.  No one has to recruit for the sports teams or the yearbook club or any other group.  You join, or try to join, because you want to belong.  A student at Oakridge Secondary here in London, who is gay, started a group for the exact reasons McGuinty has stated and he endured jeers and taunts from other kids, but the group is helping.  His name is Bryar Pace, he’s 18, and he’s one of my heroes.  The Free Press reports today that almost all of the schools in the public school board here have gay-straight-alliance groups.  They give me hope.

I really wish these critics would just unclench their butt cheeks long enough to see that the point of it all is to protect children.  And as a kid who was bullied, for reasons I’ve never really understood, I say Go Dalton.  Make it happen.  Those future generations will be better off for it.