DID the MEDIA and GLBT POLITICIANS JUMP on a POLITICAL BANDWAGON?

Oldtown News
Vancouver, BC

DID the MEDIA and GLBT POLITICIANS JUMP on a POLITICAL BANDWAGON?

Recently there has been extensive media attention given to a lesbian teacher who was fired from Little Flower Academy, a Catholic Private school.

Now New Democrat GLBT politicians have jumped on the teacher's bandwagon penning a letter to the Minister of Education Margaret McDiarmid regarding discrimination.

While I believe that nobody should be discriminated against because of their gender identity or sexual expression, however, I also believe in freedom of religious rights.

It seems that no media including our progressive news outlets like the Georgia Straight and Xtra have taken a critical approach to this particular complaint.

We all know that Catholicism has core values which often puts it in opposition to other peoples charter rights but should one set of rights trump another?

I must question why this Lesbian teacher chose to apply and work at Little Flower Academy especially knowing the Church's positions on condom use, women's reproductive health & choice and homosexuality.

It seems to me that this teacher willingly went along with this repressive-based-faith community until it was discovered that she was in fact a lesbian and then all hell broke loose.

I haven't yet seen any critical analysis from the media asking why this Teacher chose in the first place to work at Little Flower.

Did she affirm this religious community's core values until such time that she was discovered to be different from them? Did she agree to teach from a faith-based perspective and in fact by applying to work at this faith-based institution did she willingly go along with their family values, core values and religious teachings?

Finally I want to say that my Mother attended and lived at Little Flower Academy, which formerly claimed to be a boarding school but in actual fact was a residential school working together with St Mary's Mission Residential School and the horror stories my Mother told me about that she suffered at these Institutions still bring tears to my eyes.

And this Teacher must have known of the history and abuses which took place at Little Flower Academy/Residential School and yet she still willingly became part of this faith-based community and one must question why?

Until such time as there is some accurate analysis to this story I'm not certain if its in the best interest of the GLBT communities to jump on this particular bandwagon.

Jamie Lee Hamilton
tricia_foxx@yahoo.com