The fight for gay rights in Canada has been a long and difficult one, but it is undeniable that the seeds of this struggle have successfully blossomed into the fruits of increased social acceptance and legal equality. Unfortunately, it is simultaneously undeniable that while gays and lesbians may have accomplished formal equality before the law, significant strides still remain to be made with regards to trans rights (a topic which is beyond the scope of this letter) and eliminating the stigma and homophobic hatred which continues to plague the lives of our LGBT population.
As a resident of Toronto, which is home to the largest LGBT population in Canada, and as a person who interacts mostly with LGBT-positive individuals in my social and professional life, I enjoy a privileged existence as a gay woman, and it is easy for me to occasionally believe that homophobia is exclusively a phenomenon of the past. Unfortunately, the stark reality is that the suicide rate for gay youth in Canada remains four times higher than the rate for other young people, and it is estimated that between twenty-five and forty percent of homeless youth are LGBT-identified. This is not exclusively a problem for LGBT youth, though, as the rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and alcohol and drug addiction remain significantly higher for LGBT-identified adults than for straight-identified adults. The driving force behind this crisis is the widespread discrimination and stigma which causes many LGBT individuals to experience isolation and internalize the idea that they are, in the words of one respondent to a research project on mental health in LGBT communities, “inherently flawed, unlovable, second-class citizens”.
What does this have to do with Trinity Western University’s application for a law school? I am hardly suggesting that TWU’s controversial “Community Covenant” is somehow solely responsible for the homophobia which remains in Canadian society, nor do I think that TWU graduates are innately incapable of treating the LGBT individuals that they may encounter with respect. However, as someone who wishes to see a day when the last residues of homophobia have been eliminated from our society and we can finally stop burying our community, I am fundamentally opposed to the idea of an institution which has fully codified its belief that LGBT individuals are second-class citizens becoming recognized as equally legitimate to train the future of the legal profession as other Canadian law schools.
The anonymous contributor who wrote in support of TWU’s application for a law school compares the school’s Community Covenant to the practice in mosques of separating men and women, which is permitted under Canadian law despite arguably constituting gender discrimination. I do not think it is possible (or desirable) to rely on state regulation to prevent individuals and religious organizations from holding discriminatory beliefs. However, I think there is a significant difference between tolerating the existence of a house of worship which holds anti-LGBT beliefs and accrediting a post-secondary institution which does so.
While few people in Canada would support restricting a house of worship’s right to preach its own views on the role of the sexes and separate them during worship, I also think few Canadians would support granting accreditation to a religious-based law school which mandated gender segregation in the classroom and implemented a code of conduct which defined women as innately inferior, regardless of the religious freedoms or individual liberty arguments which could be used to defend such a law school. I think it is demonstrative of the work which still needs to be done that the LGBT community is one of the last social groups where it remains socially and politically acceptable to defend discrimination aimed at the group on religious grounds. While student politics in law schools are notably apolitical, I do question if Osgoode’s student organizations would be bending over backwards to remain neutral on the issue of TWU’s application for a law school if the school practiced discrimination towards any social group other than the LGBT community.
– Tressa Alan