Homophobia in the Hallways: Heterosexism and Transphobia in Canadian Catholic Schools
... For example, in Canada, teachers working for publicly-funded Catholic schools must sign an employment contract containing a Catholicity clause requiring them to uphold all elements of Catholic doctrine 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but the LGBTI teachers have been the ones most held to account. Specifically, lesbian and gay teachers in Canadian Catholic schools have been summarily dismissed for legally marrying their same-sex partners, or for wanting to raise children with their same-sex partners (Callaghan, 2018). Conversely, although the Catechism of the Catholic Church also forbids cohabitation outside of marriage, the use of contraception, and divorce, it appears that a high percentage of heterosexual teachers are keeping their jobs even though they live with partners outside of the bonds of marriage, or, if and when they do get married, they choose not to have children, plan to have small families of only two or three children, or decide to get divorced. ...
... The original Canadian study (Callaghan, 2018) employed a multi-method qualitative research framework involving three key components: (a) semi-structured interviews with 20 participants; (b) media accounts that illustrate the Catholic schools' homophobic environment; and (c) two key Catholic policy and curriculum documents from the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario. In order to help explain the phenomenon of religiously-inspired homophobia in Canadian Catholic schools, Callaghan theorized the teachers' experiences using the following critical theories: Gramsci's (1971) notion of hegemony, Althusser's (1970Althusser's ( /2008 concept of the Ideological State Apparatus, and Foucault's (1975Foucault's ( /1995 theory of disciplinary surveillance. ...
... As Callaghan (2018) points out, the fact that a teacher is forced to remain silent sends a very clear message of oppression and marginalization of diverse gender identities and sexualities to the students and others in the school. The implications for teacher and student health and wellbeing are profound. ...
... Ontario Catholic schools have a fraught history in relation to human rights laws regarding gender and sexuality (Callaghan, 2018;Iskander & Shabtay, 2018;Martino, 2014). In 2019, Ontario's Progressive Conservative Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce, articulated an "expectation…that every child, irrespective of their differences, will see themselves reflected in school, and more importantly, the Human Rights Code" (Xing, 2019a, para. ...
... In that seven-year span, many of Ontario's public (secular) school boards began creating dedicated gender diversity policies, and adding the grounds of gender expression and gender identity to other policies (Airton et al., 2019). The late addition of gender expression and gender identity to TCDSB policy reflects a perceived conflict between the Code and Catholic doctrine (Callaghan, 2018). Overall, while provincial and territorial human rights frameworks provide protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, Canadian Catholic school authority responses have been found wanting in this area (Callaghan, 2018;Iskander & Shabtay, 2018;Martino, 2014). ...
... The late addition of gender expression and gender identity to TCDSB policy reflects a perceived conflict between the Code and Catholic doctrine (Callaghan, 2018). Overall, while provincial and territorial human rights frameworks provide protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, Canadian Catholic school authority responses have been found wanting in this area (Callaghan, 2018;Iskander & Shabtay, 2018;Martino, 2014). ...
In this article, we share findings from an analysis of Ontario Catholic school board policy documents (N = 179) containing Canada’s newest human rights grounds: gender expression and gender identity. Our major finding may be unsurprising—that Ontario Catholic boards are generally not responding to Toby’s Act (passed in 2012) at the level of policy, as few boards have added these grounds in a way that enacts the spirit of that legislation. While this finding is likely unsurprising, our study also yielded findings that unsettle any facile binary of “Catholic boards/bad” and “public secular boards/good” in relation to gender diversity. We also leverage our findings to suggest a striking possibility for a vigorous and doctrinally-compatible embrace of gender expression protections in Catholic schools, if not gender identity protections. We argue that fear of gender expression protections may stem from an erroneous conflation of “gender expression” with “gender identity” when these are in fact separate grounds—a conflation that is also endemic within secular Ontario school board policy; this doubles as a conflation of gender expression with “transgender,” as the latter is unfailingly linked with gender identity human rights. We make a series of recommendations for policy, and a case for Catholic schools embracing their legal duty to provide a learning environment free from gender expression discrimination without doctrinal conflict and arguably with ample doctrinal support, so that students of all gender expressions can flourish regardless of whether they are or will come to know they are transgender.
... Investigators in the United States report students in government schools were more likely to report hearing homophobic comments compared to private or independent school types (Kosciw et al., 2022). Religious affiliated schools can also be uniquely challenging for the LGBTQ+ community including adverse practices that openly discriminate against diverse sexual orientations and gender modalities (Callaghan, 2018;Jones et al., 2022). Comparison in climates based on school types can be difficult to interpret in the Australian context. ...
... Public schools, although non-religious, are open access and universal, so greater heterogeneity in levels of discrimination can be expected, and as such, reduced capacity of schools to manage discrimination due to lower resourcing levels is also reasonable to expect. Religious affiliated private schools, while typically reflecting higher socio-economic communities and resources, can also include explicit anti-LGBTQ+ polices and teachings (Callaghan, 2018). As such, while this study indicates perceptions of SS for students differ by school type, future research is needed to explore and delineate other factors that may be influential in perceptions of SS across school types such as funding or resources, school ethos or community beliefs toward LGBTQ+ identities, and wider educational policy. ...
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/gender diverse, or queer (LGBTQ+) students, staff and parents can each perceive school as challenging environments. These challenges have typically been explored within three disparate bodies of research, however. Using a school climate lens, this study aimed to explore how LGBTQ+ student (n = 1926), staff (n = 198), and parent (n = 180) perceptions of school safety, interpersonal challenges and self-harm differ by roles, school types, school location , and gender modality. ANOVA and chi-square analyses showed that although LGBTQ+ students, staff and parents experience similar concerns in school safety, interpersonal challenges, and self-harm, students have higher prevalence on all indicators. Students in government/public, religious affiliated schools, and non-metropolitan schools had particularly high concerns, as did transgender and gender diverse students. This study offers important implications for school-wide interventions to promote positive school climates, with particular focus on school safety, anti-bullying, and self-harm, targeted to the needs of multiple members of the LGBTQ+ community.
... It also reflected transformational views of religious freedom seen in some modern theorizingparticularly allowance for multi-culturalism and pluralism (Okin 1999;Richter 2018). It further echoed how Canadian LGBTIQA+ students seek to be 'activists' not just 'victims' in religious schools (Callaghan 2016(Callaghan , 2018; and broader generational desires for avoidance of social backlash/ judgement seen in teen social media studies (Agater 2022). ...
... Increased religiosity of schools was associated with decreased religious freedoms as defined by LGBTIQA+ students, for both staff and students. This echoed research showing publicly funded Canadian Catholic schools also systematically sanctioned LGBTIQA+ staff and students (Callaghan 2015(Callaghan , 2016(Callaghan , 2018. In Australia, religious schools were less likely to include freedoms of religion choice or practice, or beliefs; and more likely to have contracts enforcing set religions and specific anti-LGBTIQA+ beliefs and practices. ...
Definitions of ‘religious freedom’ around schools’ treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA+) students have been regularly debated internationally, with little input from LGBTIQA+ students. Transformative theories of religious freedom around sex, gender and sexuality in education suggest religious freedom cannot counter equality. This study uses data from the 2022 Gender and Sexuality Expression in Schools Survey to explore 1293 Australian LGBTIQA+ students’ relevant experiences and definitions around religious freedom in schools. Basic descriptive and correlative statistical analyses were undertaken for quantitative data in SPSS and Excel including chi square tests; alongside Leximancer-supported thematic analyses and poetic transcription of qualitative responses. LGBTIQA+ students defined ‘religious freedom’ as positive freedoms of religious (non-)memberships and (non-)beliefs, without interpersonal/institutional harm or coercion. They often framed freedom using ‘transformative’ pro-LGBTIQA+ ideals. LGBTIQA+ students were less likely to experience ‘religious freedom’ in religious schools; where policy and educational interventions appear necessary.
... So-called reparative or conversion "therapy" was a method employed by mental health professionals to redirect or "repair" their gay clients' "unnatural" inclinations through aversive means (Bright, 2004;Callaghan, 2018). Today, all forms of reparative therapy are considered to be unethical and harmful (Callaghan, 2018) and yet not long ago prominent Toronto psychologist Kenneth Zucker advocated for reparative treatments such as refusing children to wear cross-gender clothing, playing only with same-gender children, removing cross-gender toys or items, and participating in stereotypical activities for one's gender (Zucker, et al., 2012). ...
... So-called reparative or conversion "therapy" was a method employed by mental health professionals to redirect or "repair" their gay clients' "unnatural" inclinations through aversive means (Bright, 2004;Callaghan, 2018). Today, all forms of reparative therapy are considered to be unethical and harmful (Callaghan, 2018) and yet not long ago prominent Toronto psychologist Kenneth Zucker advocated for reparative treatments such as refusing children to wear cross-gender clothing, playing only with same-gender children, removing cross-gender toys or items, and participating in stereotypical activities for one's gender (Zucker, et al., 2012). This was enforced while the child underwent therapy to ascertain the underlying reasons for desiring to be the other gender and the parents were advised to keep stricter gendered boundaries (Zucker, et al., 2012). ...
Although studies have been conducted on the experiences of transgender and non-binary children, limited research has looked at the parents of these children. This qualitative study explored the transformative learning (Mezirow, 1978) of the parents of transgender and non- binary children by employing the concepts of biographical learning (Alheit, 1994) and holistic learning (Illeris, 2003) as its conceptual framework. The research questions asked: to what extent the parents experienced transformative learning, how they made the cognitive-affective shift in learning, how their own gender identity development informed their interpretations of their child’s gender transition, and how they navigated any tensions created within a family. Applying life history methods and methodology, I conducted 2 to 3 interviews with 16 parents of children aged 6 to 29, most of whom recorded their thoughts in journals, and I wrote an autoethnography as a parent of a non-binary child myself. The findings showed that for many parents, holistic learning took place in two phases. First, parents experienced a private phase of transformative learning through a cognitive reframing of the meaning of gender and a relinquishing of the emotions that were attached to gender (such as losing your daughter). Then began a public phase where parents learned to advocate for their children in schools, medical offices, or courtrooms. Parents of non-binary children may take longer working through these stages and many participants benefitted from lingering at a particular place of learning as they processed their thoughts or emotions. Furthermore, a parent’s personal sense of gender identity did not play a salient role for most parents; rather, their value in authenticity or the ability to be yourself influenced their commitment to their child. A parent’s gender identity did play a notable role for two mothers who identified as feminist who found it necessary to revisit their definition of
woman at the time of their children’s transition. These findings provide a better understanding of the transformative learning of parents of transgender and non-binary children who often need support on this personal and public journey towards championing their children, challenging societal norms, and promoting inclusivity.
... To West, Van Der Walt, and Kaoma (2016), 'homophobia' is a shorthand for stigmatizing attitudes and practices towards people who demonstrate sexual diversity. In Christian churches such as the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), homophobia is still considered a silent "disease" that continues to hound Catholic institutions up to the present times (Congregation for Catholic Education 2005;Cozzens 2000Cozzens , 2006Junker 2019;Callaghan 2018;Callaghan and Van Leent 2019). ...
This chapter sociologically investigates the Roman Catholic Church's moral panic on the alleged threats of the so-called "gender ideology" to the welfare of children in same-sex families, using Pope Francis's synodal approach and drawing on secondary literature, media reports, and church documents. It argues that the alleged threats of same-sex couples in same-sex families to the children's welfare are exaggeration and moral panic in the sociological sense. It contends that negative perception of same-sex parenthood on the children's welfare is largely a structural influence of societal homophobia and social discrimination of same-sex parents under a rigid gender complementary and heterosexual standards of the Catholic Church's moral magisterium founded on the philosophical approach of natural law theory. It recommends a synodal openness to diverse family structures and definitions of children's welfare in world and a reappraisal of the empirical foundations of gender complementarity interpretation of Genesis.
... Religious schools were most likely to have a Limited Inclusive strategy, providing few LGBTQ+ strategies, likely reflecting Australian laws allowing religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals (Callaghan, 2018). Public schools were more likely to have an Extracurricular Inclusive strategy, possibly due to state and national endorsements of such strategies (Australian Educational Authorities, 2021). ...
... Diversity and inclusion discourses can act as slow violence, decapacitating political agency for marginalised groups. As Callaghan (2018) points out in their study of heterosexism and homophobia in Canadian Catholic schools, broad equity clubs called By Your SIDE 10 spaces are recommended by Catholic education leaders instead of gay-straight alliances, under the premise that terms such as 'gay' and 'lesbian' are 'politically charged'. Indeed, the loss of a proudly queer space within a vastly heteronormative one was taken by some openly queer students as an act of silencing and conforming. ...
Slow violence occurs gradually and out of sight, an attritional violence of delayed destruction not usually viewed as violence at all. Relative to more immediately perceived and recognisable forms of violence, the temporal, spatial, and sensational invisibility of slow violence can hinder efforts to act decisively towards it. Drawing on material from ethnographic research in an outer-suburban Melbourne secondary school, I examine how attending to affective dissonances experienced by students and staff led me to witness the school’s first Pride Club meeting, the group’s decline, and its transformation into Stand Out Club. This transformation lifts to view a move beyond the politics through which the group was initially conceived into an ethical response attentive to queer students’ lives. Slow violence, conceptually, has much to offer, including the possibility for recognising and responding to slow violence with an ethics of nonviolence.
... When viewed together, Short et al. (2021) and Callaghan's (2018) work provides an extensive, multifaceted analysis of Christian religious beliefs within schools that infringe on the human rights of 2SLGBTQIA+ children and youth, which is undeniably connected to them feeling as though "threats to their safety [are] expected, inevitable, and encouraged" (Short et al., 2021, p. 133). ...
... In a Catholic context, one of the theological stakes appears to be the guiding aim of integration of the whole self. The colloquialism "love the sinner, hate the sin" divorces trans gender identities (the sin) from the whole person (the sinner), insisting a in a dualistic binary that not only demands dis-integrating a trans person's gender identity from the rest of their whole self (Callaghan, 2018), but positions a vital component of the self as antithetical to the will of God. ...
... You would think by now, in 2019, a queer Catholic school teacher wouldn't be concerned about losing her job for representing her queerness in an article. Unfortunately, this is today's reality (Callaghan, 2018). I never imagined sharing this part of me through a short narrative film, much less in a professional academic setting, and now in an article with the intention of it getting published. ...
... LGBTI youth experiences and subjectivity (Quinn & Meiners, 2013;Fields et al., 2014), and recent work on systemic heterosexism and cissexism in Canadian Catholic education (Callaghan, 2014;2016;2018). By foregrounding the voices of the young activists through their publiclydelivered speeches, we place them in conversation with scholars who have written about the Ontario Catholic school gay-straight alliance controversy (Herriot, 2014;Kates, 2013;Martino, 2014;Niblett & Oraa, 2014;Seitz, 2014). ...
... This is evidenced by notable advances in same-sex legal rights. Nevertheless, previous research (Callaghan, 2007(Callaghan, , 2018 has shown that these legal advances are typically not respected in Catholic schools causing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) students and teachers to be at risk for homophobic discrimination. Caught between the religious edicts of the Vatican and the secular laws of the state, Catholic schools in Canada and Australia respond to non-heterosexual students and teachers in contradictory and inconsistent ways, including expulsion, firing, or more subtle forms of exclusion. ...
... It would be easy, then, to point to, documents like Why Johnny Can 't Read (1955) or A Nation at Risk (1983) or No Child Left Behind (2001 as manifestations of the Jeremiad in U.S. educational policy. In Canadian society, due to differing organization of public education, one might turn to the ongoing debates over curriculum related to social mores (e.g., Alphonso, 2018;Junker, 2017) or look closely at the ways in which in the context of public Catholic schools in Canada, section two, the freedom of conscience and religion provision, is set against section 15, the equality rights provision, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in arguments about protections for sexual minorities in schools (Callaghan, 2018). But of course we might go further back to the Progressive movement and its progenitors, and find in The School and Society (1889) or I Learn from Children (1948) and on through both Bill Bennett and Alfie Kohn's work, that prophetic indictment is the stalking horse that follows with the body of the work. ...
This article is about evil and its function in educational discourse. The research posits, using work in postsecularism and particularly through an historical, legal, and theological read of prophetic indictment and the function of the jeremiad in educational policy, that the terms of educational debate are rendered in a legal rather than a deliberative discursive framework. This lends itself, then, to the creation of evil others opposed to one’s own preferred policy prescriptions and renders much of the discussion about and around the need for conversation and comity moot. The authors propose attending to the function of evil in education as well as positing an historical approach to thinking about why we often can’t think differently about educational arguments.
... You would think by now, in 2019, a queer Catholic school teacher wouldn't be concerned about losing her job for representing her queerness in an article. Unfortunately, this is today's reality (Callaghan, 2018). I never imagined sharing this part of me through a short narrative film, much less in a professional academic setting, and now in an article with the intention of it getting published. ...
We discuss the use of digital story methodology as an inquiry into the queering of teacher education. Participants’ films explored queer woman teacher identities, including our bodies, histories, and perceptions of our queerness within classes and in the field of education. Through filmmaking, group discussion and analysis, we found contemplation over outness to be a common theme, expressed through the subthemes of vulnerability, compartmentalization, visibility and representation. Our intersecting identities were fundamental in shaping our queer decisions as educators in teacher education. The narrative is articulated through both individual and collective voice.
... Rather, Menns knows that, while the school responded to reports of harassment, the initial occurrence of this harassment was a direct result of the schools' refusal, publicized in media, to allow a GSA. Interpersonal violence is shaped by institutional and structural violence (Winton & Tuters, 2015;Quinn & Meiners, 2013), and Catholic schools are structurally homophobic and transphobic institutions (Callaghan, 2018). Here, the institutional power of the school influenced the interactions between Menns and his peers: by refusing a GSA, the school administration had privileged Catholic doctrine over the requests of its LGBTQ students. ...
The Accepting Schools Act (Bill 13), which amends the Education Act of Ontario, Canada, passed in 2012 includes the directive that all publicly-funded schools, whether secular or Catholic, support students who wish to establish, name, and run gay-straight alliances (GSAs). This legislation was influenced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth activism and the events preceding Bill 13’s passage exemplify effective political mobilization by secondary school students in defiance of their schools. This article brings the voices of the youth activists, including one of its authors, together with news media and scholarly literature to reflect on the aims of this LGBTQ youth activism.
... Working within a research team to investigate an emerging body of evidence that documents the clash between the rights of LGBTI students and religious freedoms in Catholic schools (Callaghan, 2018;Covert, 1993;Varnham & Evers, 2009), the research assistant developed a variation of the Erasure Poetry workshop that was designed for the Calgary Young Writers Conference workshop, but this time for a much different audience: Camp fYrefly-Calgary. Originating at the University of Alberta, Camp fYrefly is a summer camp designed to support and foster resiliency and leadership skills among LGBTI youth in their local communities. ...
Arts-based research marks a unique nexus of curricula and its social context. Through the application of semiotics and a focus on anti-oppressive pedagogy, this paper articulates the function of art curricula in empowering student voice to approach and begin to dismantle the oppression of minoritized peoples. We have initiated a political, participatory application of Erasure Poetry that emphasizes the relationship of participants to their broader political environment. The presence of students throughout every dimension of the classroom experience makes the facilitation of their voices a key tool for consciousness-raising and the promotion of equitable, pluralistic, and democratic pedagogies. We posit that making political poetry is an important vehicle for personal reflection, critical thinking, self-expression, and demonstrating knowledge through action that is particularly effective for engaging minority learners, such as those who identify as gender and sexually diverse, in conservative times. Keywords: Erasure poetry, semiotics, student voice, gender & sexually diverse learners
... Working within a research team to investigate an emerging body of evidence that documents the clash between the rights of LGBTI students and religious freedoms in Catholic schools (Callaghan, 2018;Covert, 1993;Varnham & Evers, 2009), the research assistant developed a variation of the Erasure Poetry workshop that was designed for the Calgary Young Writers Conference workshop, but this time for a much different audience: Camp fYrefly-Calgary. Originating at the University of Alberta, Camp fYrefly is a summer camp designed to support and foster resiliency and leadership skills among LGBTI youth in their local communities. ...
Arts-based research marks a unique nexus of curricula and its social context. Through the application of semiotics and a focus on anti-oppressive pedagogy, this paper articulates the function of art curricula in empowering student voice to approach and begin to dismantle the oppression of minoritized peoples. We have initiated a political, participatory application of Erasure Poetry that emphasizes the relationship of participants to their broader political environment. The presence of students throughout every dimension of the classroom experience makes the facilitation of their voices a key tool for consciousness-raising and the promotion of equitable, pluralistic, and democratic pedagogies. We posit that making political poetry is an important vehicle for personal reflection, critical thinking, self-expression, and demonstrating knowledge through action that is particularly effective for engaging minority learners, such as those who identify as gender and sexually diverse, in conservative times. Keywords: Erasure poetry, semiotics, student voice, gender & sexually diverse learners
This paper explores the sex and gender content of the Ontario Catholic School’s Family Life Education curriculum and the Fully Alive program, taking these materials up as an archive. The goal of this archival review was to explore the sexual health content in Fully Alive and how it aligns or differs from the best practices outlined in the Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education while analyzing this material with an eye to potential implications of the curriculum on the sexual health outcomes of junior and intermediate students attending Ontario Catholic schools. A literature review was undertaken to explore the conceptualization of problem spaces, previous studies of sexual health education, a historical background of the Ontario Catholic school system and its use of Fully Alive, and the differences between comprehensive versus abstinence-based sexual health education with research into the effectiveness of each program.
Through this work, it is argued that as Fully Alive does not provide a comprehensive approach to sexual health education, students are not able to make informed decisions regarding their sexual health and wellness. Considering Fully Alive’s cis- and heteronormative approaches to these topics, students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, nonbinary, asexual, and other emerging identities (LGBTQI2SNA+), through their omission in the program, may not be receiving adequate information to support their needs, and thus are at a heightened risk of negative outcomes related to their sexual health. The findings are discussed through three of the nine core principles found in the Guidelines that ask whether the curriculum is accurate and based in evidence, if it is inclusive of existing and emerging sexual and gender identities, and if it has a balance between positive aspects of sexuality and risks that could result in negative outcomes.
Keywords: Ontario, Sexual Health Education, Catholicism, Fully Alive, Archive
This article highlights sexual health education findings from a larger qualitative research study that examines the lived experiences of transgender and non-binary (TNB) youth (aged 14–25) in Alberta. This study contributes to a growing field focusing on the unique experiences of TNB students in Canada by exploring the gaps and successes in sexual health education. Given that there is no federally mandated sexual health curriculum, and that each Canadian province and territory updates curriculum and teaches sexual health differently, this study aims to provide insights into the experiences of TNB youth and the sexual health education they have received in their formal educational environments. The research findings highlight two major themes and two sub-themes: (1) All participants found sexual health education in schools to be inadequate in some way. (2) If you want something done right, do it yourself. Sub-themes included; (2a) the community or internet media are key sources of relevant sexual health information, and (2b) youth have limited access to the sexual orientation and gender identity–specific sexual health information they want.
This chapter sociologically investigates the Roman Catholic Church’s moral panic on the alleged threats of the so-called “gender ideology” to the welfare of children in same-sex families, using Pope Francis’s synodal approach and drawing on secondary literature, media reports, and Church documents. It argues that the alleged threats of homosexual couples in same-sex families to the children’s welfare are an exaggeration and moral panic in the sociological sense. It contends that negative perception of same-sex parenthood on the children’s welfare is largely a structural influence of societal homophobia and social discrimination against same-sex parents under the rigid gender complementary and heterosexual standards of the Catholic Church’s moral magisterium, founded on the philosophical approach of natural law theory. It recommends a synodal openness to diverse family structures and definitions of children’s welfare and a reappraisal of the empirical foundations of the gender complementarity interpretation of Genesis.
Applying Pope Francis’s inductive synodal approach and sociological perspectives, this chapter explores how the four major cognitive structures contribute to the persistence of internalized and institutional homophobia in the Roman Catholic Church, namely, the (1) deductive philosophical approach to morality based on the Thomistic natural law theory, (2) ecclesial metaphysical view of sex and gender as immutably united and inseparable, ignoring social science research, (3) rigid interpretation of heteronormativity and gender complementarity in traditional church doctrines, as well as the (4) traditional gender and sexuality education and formation of Catholic clerics that socially reproduced institutional homophobia. It argues that the Catholic Church should apply the inductive synodal-sociological approach to Catholic morality, which is open to sociological research on sex, gender, homosexuality, and same-sex union in order to achieve Francis’s inclusive synodal church and overcome the institutional homophobia in the Catholic Church.
This chapter offers a set of reflections on potential concerns and reservations in relation to Trans Gender non-binary (TGNB) young people and their experiences in Catholic schools. The changing context of schooling in relation to TGNB students is discussed through recollecting some personal conversations. In this chapter three research questions are considered. The final part of the chapter offers a personal reflection on the notion of queer thriving.
The permissibility of student GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance) clubs in Ontario has been heavily disputed, with Catholic schools showing particular resistance. With a history of opposing same-sex rights, Canada’s Catholic Church holds great social, economic, and political power. This institution-level power generates extensive structural stigma that harms the LGBTQ community, including adolescents. Stigmatization provokes emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and physiological responses that compound each other, altering one’s health. Through the use of accepted socio-epidemiological guidelines for establishing causal inference along with data from a Canadian report on homophobia and transphobia in both Catholic and public schools, it is evident that structural stigma, expressed through prejudice against GSAs in Ontario Catholic schools, is harmful to the health of LGBTQ students. LGBTQ students, who are structurally stigmatized in Ontario Catholic schools, experience inferior emotional health compared to their nonstigmatized cisgender and heterosexual peers. Literature reviewed demonstrates confidence in a causal relationship; due to the structural stigma that Catholic schools in Ontario perpetuate against the LGBTQ community, LGBTQ students attending these schools experience greater risks to their mental health. It is imperative that LGBTQ youth are protected in schools, and solutions must be considered to balance Catholic religious rights in education with the health and social needs of students.
Determining the depth of discrimination against gender and sexual minority groups in Catholic schools of selected western nations is best undertaken from an international-comparative perspective. In this article, we compare the Canadian case of Alberta’s ‘washroom wars’ and a ‘gender row’ over uniform changes in an Australian Catholic high school. In each case, practises inclusive of gender diversity in Catholic schools were framed as a departure from Catholic doctrine. To explore how oppressive structures exist and operate within schools, we examine media accounts of each case using Critical Discourse Analysis and contextualize this analysis by examining Canadian and Australian educational and legal settings. We find that despite differing legal frameworks, some Catholic schools continue to place Canonical law above the rights of transgender and gender-diverse students in both countries. We therefore argue that it is the Catholic system’s institutional stance on gender and sexual diversity that perpetuates discrimination.
The concept of slow violence has broadened understandings of violence in ways that capture its spatial and temporal complexity, and that draw attention to its often-hidden operation. Since the 1960s and 70s scholars of schooling and education have asked questions about power relations, inequalities and injustices in schools, and in the early 21st century have turned their attention to affect and materiality. Yet although its conceptual predecessor, structural violence, has informed past education research, slow violence has not been widely taken up. The section What is Slow Violence explores the concept of slow violence, with the section Everyday Violence in Schooling and Education considering its relevance and use for Education scholars concerned with the various mundane forms of violence enacted in schools, sometimes unintentionally and often unnoticed. While the concept of slow violence is useful for thinking about everyday violence in this way, its real strength as a concept is lifted to view when considered in relation with affect in schooling and education; this potential is explored in Perceiving and Responding to Slow Violence and gestured towards in Possibilities for Ethics and Justice in Education.
Sexual culture(s) are an active presence in the shaping of school relations, and LGBTQ issues have long been recognized as a dangerous form of knowledge in school settings. Queer issues in educational domains quickly attract surveillance and have historically often been aggressively prosecuted and silence enforced. This paper examines the intersections of straight allies in promoting an LGBTQ visibility and agency in Australian secondary schools. Drawing on interviews with “straight”-identified secondary students, a narrative methodology was utilized to explore the presence of student allies for making safe schools. Drawing on straight secondary students' responses to LGBTQ issues in their schools, firsthand accounts of intervening in heteronorming school cultures focus on experiences of being an ally to address LGBTQ inclusivity in Australian secondary schools.
This book chapter explores the possibility of doing G&S education and research differently by re-doing teaching. Specifically, it challenges teachers’ conceptions of their work in this area, including the assumption teachers should not engage with gender or sexuality at all. The chapter argues cisgender and heterosexual norms are so inherently promoted in schools and so visibly engaged with by teachers; that non-engagement implicitly supports traditional G&S positions. It outlines relevant curricula and policies on sex education endorsing a critical teaching approach, and data showing some teachers take pleasure in a critical approach regardless of curriculum requirements.
As a group, gender and sexual minorities in Canada – including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-spirit (LGBTQ2S+) identified people – are more likely to live in poverty, face greater barriers to employment, and earn less at work than their cisgender, heterosexual counterparts, in addition to reporting poorer health and social outcomes. As an emerging area of research, significant knowledge gaps remain. In particular, there is a demonstrated need for research that accounts for differential outcomes within the LGBTQ2S+ community, takes an explicitly-intersectional approach, and is interdisciplinary in nature. These gaps are partially explained by the lack of high-quality, population-level data on gender and sexual minorities in the Canadian context.
This report documents the Phase 1 findings of the project Economic, health and social inequities faced by LGBTQ2S+ individuals in Canada, funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada and in partnership with Dr. Sean Waite at the University of Western Ontario, Pride at Work Canada, and the Labour Market Information Council. Authored by the SRDC project team and Dr. Sean Waite, the Phase 1 report communicates the project findings to-date, drawing from grey and peer-reviewed literature, key informant interviews, and a scan of available datasets to begin to describe outcomes and determinants thereof for LGBTQ2S+ individuals in Canada, as well as critically assess the data landscape. Subsequent phases will build on these findings, drawing in quantitative (Phase 2) and qualitative (Phase 3) data and analysis.
This research examines media accounts of teachers in Canada and the United States who were fired or forced from their Catholic schools because they identified as lesbian, highlighting the reality of discrimination in Catholic schools, particularly egregious in their contradiction of non-discrimination legislation. Caught between the religious edicts of the Vatican and the secular laws of the state, Catholic schools in Canada and the United States respond to non-heterosexual students and teachers in contradictory and inconsistent ways, including expulsion, firing, or more subtle forms of exclusion. This study suggests that the issue is not within a country’s legal or policy protections but in the consistent prioritization of Catholic Canonical law through provision of religious exemptions over the rights of staff.
Because spiritual life and religious participation are widespread human and cultural phenomena, these experiences unsurprisingly find their way into English language arts curriculum, learning, teaching, and teacher education work. Yet many public school literacy teachers and secondary teacher educators feel unsure how to engage religious and spiritual topics and responses in their classrooms. This volume responds to this challenge with an in-depth exploration of diverse experiences and perspectives on Christianity within American education.
Authors not only examine how Christianity – the historically dominant religion in American society – shapes languaging and literacies in schooling and other educational spaces, but they also imagine how these relations might be reconfigured. From curricula to classroom practice, from narratives of teacher education to youth coming-to-faith, chapters vivify how spiritual lives, beliefs, practices, communities, and religious traditions interact with linguistic and literate practices and pedagogies. In relating legacies of Christian languaging and literacies to urgent issues including White supremacy, sexism and homophobia, and the politics of exclusion, the volume enacts and invites inclusive relational configurations within and across the myriad American Christian sub-cultures coming to bear on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning.
This courageous collection contributes to an emerging scholarly literature at the intersection of language and literacy teaching and learning, religious literacy, curriculum studies, teacher education, and youth studies. It will speak to teacher educators, scholars, secondary school teachers, and graduate and postgraduate students, among others.
This book showcases and celebrates the work of Gender and Sexuality Education scholars in order to challenge current negative interpretations of the field, and work towards new shared visions. The editors and contributors call for, affirm and offer examples of pathways towards exciting and dynamic collaborative work in Gender and Sexuality in Education. In doing so, they also acknowledge the various complexities of this field, and detail the context-specific barriers faced by academics and activists. Drawing upon a range of global case studies, this book sets out information and advice from cross-sector experts to set an agenda of mutual supportiveness, and to smooth pathways for future collaboration. Above all, this book is a call to action to uplift the field – and each other – in challenging environments.
This book showcases and celebrates the work of Gender and Sexuality Education scholars in order to challenge current negative interpretations of the field, and work towards new shared visions. The editors and contributors call for, affirm and offer examples of pathways towards exciting and dynamic collaborative work in Gender and Sexuality in Education. In doing so, they also acknowledge the various complexities of this field, and detail the context-specific barriers faced by academics and activists. Drawing upon a range of global case studies, this book sets out information and advice from cross-sector experts to set an agenda of mutual supportiveness, and to smooth pathways for future collaboration. Above all, this book is a call to action to uplift the field – and each other – in challenging environments. This ground-breaking book will be of interest and value to scholars of Gender and Sexuality Education research.
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