From Yahoo News:
Parents: school board duplicity on anti-gay bullying vs. Christophobia, other bullying
Peter Baklinski | Mon Mar 12 16:15 EST | Faith |
HAMILTON, Ontario, March 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Hamilton’s Orthodox Christian community leaders have cried foul as a public school board superintendent responsible for safe and caring schools has told the faith group that their own concerns about Christian bullying “require no further attention”.
The Pan-Orthodox Association of Greater Hamilton, a group representing the city’s 20,000 Orthodox Christians, met on two occasions with Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board superintendent Pam Reinholdt to discuss their concerns over the board’s selective promotion of anti-gay bullying strategies which they say ignores the vast majority of bullying incidents in schools.
Leaders of the faith group say that at their last meeting, Reinholdt “repeatedly attacked” their concerns over the special status given by the board to anti-gay bullying strategies. The leaders had pointed out to Reinholdt the Board’s support for the anti-gay bullying initiative, including awareness weeks, guest speakers, pink t-shirt events, and a regular conference for secondary students on gay issues.
The faith group noted that a recent report from Statistics Canada showed that there were twice as many hate crimes motivated by religion than those based on sexual orientation. Topping the list was race or ethnicity as the most common motivation for a hate related crime.
Leaders of the faith group are now criticizing the board for repeatedly rejecting their offers to help provide assistance with staff training and student education to raise awareness of what they call “Christophobic bullying” while at the same time accepting such services from other groups, including the help of a self-described lesbian “youth worship leader” from a synagogue whorecently tried to convince the audience at a gay-straight alliance assembly held at a Hamilton-area public school that biblical teaching on homosexuality was obsolete, archaic and “wrong”.
“Despite years of responsibility for preventing bullying in schools, Reinholdt explained that she did not know the definition of the word Christophobia, nor did she believe that students of faith were regular victims of bullying,” said Father Geoffrey Korz, general secretary of the Orthodox Association, in a press release.
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