Religious freedom (the freedom to be bigots)

Catholic schools in Ontario have been given a much needed kick to the ass by our premier.  Dalton McGuinty's new legislation is going to make it mandatory that clubs within the Catholic school board be allowed to have the word 'gay' in them - this was necessary because the church decided that gay-straight alliance clubs were not allowed.  To quote Dalton:

"I am accountable to all faiths, I'm accountable to people of no faith.  I'm accountable to all parents."

I wasn't sure that this would actually go through.  The premier is Catholic, his children are Catholic school educated and his wife works in the Catholic school system so it wouldn't have been a shock to me if he let the Catholic board pull their hateful BS and prevent straight kids from showing support for homosexuals.  That isn't going to happen though, even though Dalton is getting some real heat from Catholic bishops and is being pilloried in the right wing news for impinging on religious freedom.  To quote a bishop:

"We simply ask that diversity be respected in our society"

by which he means that Catholics ask that they have the right to mistreat, marginalize and openly discriminate against homosexuals.  That's what diversity means folks, you heard it here.  It makes me want to promote my own particular belief of 'burn down all Catholic churches' and ask that my beliefs be accepted in the name of diversity.  It boggles my mind when I see news articles quoting religious leaders who argue that they are being persecuted because the state is trying to prevent them from persecuting others.  I see this stuff far more often in the US where Obama is regularly characterized as waging a war on religion but it does crop up here too - the only real difference is that the bible thumper vote here is less powerful and less geographically concentrated so they don't get the same airtime.

Strangely enough I actually found a right wing rag which believes in codified bigotry against homosexuals advocating that the government stop funding Catholic schools and simply have one public school system.  Their argument roughly went that this was a good idea so that the government would have to get out of the business of regulating and being responsible for those schools - they could then get on with being intolerable jerks without Dalton McGuinty's interference.  I couldn't agree more.  Get rid of the Catholic school board and let those who really want to pay for indoctrination do so.  The rest of the regular kids who aren't being brainwashed can get regular schooling like the rest of us and we can use all the extra money to make things even better for those who don't want to fork over the cash for a religious 'education'.