The persecution of faithful Catholic school trustees has shown starkly just how far the LGBTQ lobby has reached into Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic schools.
Toronto District Catholic School Board (TCDSB) trustees Mike Del Grande, Teresa Lubinski, Garry Tanuan and Nancy Crawford voted November 8 against including the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected grounds for discrimination in the board’s code of conduct.
As a result of their stand, they have been vilified by the LGBTQ community, as well as some members of the press and their own board. Mike Del Grande, in particular, has been subject to some of the worst torrents of unfounded criticism.
Therefore, this petition is an urgent show of support for Mike and the other three board members who voted to protect children from the dangerous and confusing concepts of gender ideology.
And, the petition is directed both to the Trustees of the TCDSB, as well as to Cardinal Collins.
On the other side, the eight trustees who voted to include the terms seemed to believe that endorsing gender ideology was necessary for students who identify as LGBTQ to feel that they belong, and that it was a loving thing that Jesus would do.
But this is a false compassion based on profound moral confusion.
The trustees who voted against the motion were trying to protect the children under their care from the very real spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical dangers of the spurious gender ideology.
Please SIGN this petition and send a message to the Board and to Cardinal Collins, that you want Toronto's Catholic schoolchildren protected from harmful gender ideology.
Pope Francis has condemned gender ideology, describing it as “demonic,” and as “an error of the human mind that leads to so much confusion.”
“Today, in schools they are teaching this to children—to children!—that everyone can choose their gender,” he said in 2016. “This is terrible.”
Likewise, Pope Benedict XVI has explained gender theory as a “profound falsehood” that contains an “anthropological revolution” by disputing “the idea that [human beings] have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being.”
Nevertheless, the Toronto archdiocese regretfully conceded in a November 11 statement that the ministry of education policy PPM 128 “directs that the prohibited grounds of discrimination found in the Ontario Human Rights Code be included in updated Codes of Conduct for all school boards in Ontario.”
But even as the archdiocese wrote that it “recognizes that terms such as gender identity are included in the Code,” it added: “[W]e do not accept the view of the human person which underlies this terminology, since that view is not compatible with our faith.”
All of this is in spite of the fact that renowned medical experts have condemned gender ideology as child abuse (see below, for more information).
Still, Trustee Mike Del Grande has been pilloried in the press and on social media, a petition has been launched calling for his resignation, and a number of complaints reportedly filed against him...just for following Catholic teaching! (Please read Mike's statement defending his position, below).
So, right now, Mike, and the other faithful Trustees, need your support!
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition in support of Mike Del Grande and the three other TCDSB Trustees who voted to protect the innocence of children from the harms of gender ideology.
And, please pray for them and the TCDSB, that God's design for mankind, with two sexes, will ultimately be vindicated by the Board and Cardinal Collins.
**You will also have the option to send a postcard to the TCDSB and to Cardinal Collins.**
This show of confidence in their stand - and, in Catholic teaching about the human person - will demonstrate that Mike, and the three other Trustees, represents the feelings of many lay Catholics.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Mike Del Grande's defense of his stand in a statement published last Friday in LifeSiteNews:
“I am not a hero. I am a faithful Catholic with an informed conscience standing up for Catholic education and Church teachings. The Church is the instrument of eternal salvation for humanity,” wrote Del Grande.
A onetime budget chief under former Toronto Mayor the late Rob Ford who holds a master’s degree in theology, as well as undergraduate degrees in commerce and finance and education, Del Grande forsook the $105,000 city councillor’s salary to run for the $18,500-annual position as Catholic trustee because he believed in Catholic education.
While Christians elsewhere are being killed for their beliefs, “I am only harassed, hated, and repudiated for the stand that I took against a gender ideology which is incompatible with the Christian anthropology of the human person – a stand that was twisted by the media and believed by those who needed someone on which to focus their hate,” Del Grande wrote.
“Each one of us cannot simply take the comfort of the pew on a Sunday, and say nothing or do nothing about the attacks on our faith taking place all around us. Fr. Dwight Longenecker put it best for me: ‘First we overlook evil. Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil.’ I call it evil.”
Pope Benedict on dangers of gender ideology:
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being…The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears,” Benedict said.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the Amercian College of Pediatricians, told the 2018 Values Voter Summit, a statement she has frequently reiterated since:
“America is engaged in large-scale child abuse – and complicit in this is...my field of pediatrics, psychiatry, our education system, mass media, and social media.”
“Institutionalized child abuse” begins with “social impersonation” as adults encourage children who are confused about their sex to adopt an opposite sex name, pronouns, and clothing, she said.
Dr. Paul McHugh, Distinguished Service Professor, Johns Hopkins Medicine, told the same audience:
“Sex reassignment surgery patients suffer suicide rates 20 times greater than their peers . . . no more optimistic long term results than that are available.”
Indeed, increasing numbers of people are voicing anguish and regret over their “transition” to the opposite sex, with 200 people attending the world’s first “detransitioning” conference in Manchester, England, earlier this month.
