[LINK] "The false debate over Trinity Western"
Emma Teitel at MacLean's writes about the controversy surrounding the law school of Trinity Western University. A private Christian university in British Columbia, TWU's effort to open a law school nearly came aground on the basis of a covenant barring non-heterosexual students. There were consequences, and Teitel argues that there should be consequences.
The law school, slated to open in 2016, has the support of lawyers in British Columbia and the B.C. government, but the Law Society of Upper Canada believes its sexuality policy is discriminatory. Ontario’s lawyers voted 28-21 against accrediting the school; the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society followed suit, refusing to accredit TWU unless it amends its covenant’s discriminatory requirements or allows students to forgo signing the covenant altogether. New Brunswick’s law society is scheduled to vote on the issue in June. The consequences for future TWU law graduates are great: they will not be able to article or practise law in provinces where their school is not accredited.
TWU’s covenant isn’t new, but its presence at a law school is particularly controversial. “If you’re going to teach the law,” says Douglas Judson, an Osgoode Hall law student in Toronto arguing against the law school’s accreditation, “you have a duty to propagate Charter values.” A duty: not a legal obligation. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms may forbid government discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but TWU is a private, religious institution. It doesn’t have to toe the government line. Besides, there are all kinds of gay-friendly law schools out there, jam-packed with gender-neutral bathrooms and “safe spaces” for every letter in that constantly expanding variegated acronym-so why can’t the Christians have an accredited “safe space” of their own?
It’s simple: we shouldn’t accredit TWU’s law school for the same reason we wouldn’t likely accredit a medical school that treated homosexuality as biologically and psychologically disordered. Like medicine, ethics is a science too; and blind absolutism makes for bad science. Consider the following excerpt from the affidavit of Jill Bishop, a lesbian who attended TWU in the mid-2000s and now supports gay activist Trevor Loke’s constitutional challenge of the B.C. government’s decision to approve the law school. “I observed that the lens of evangelical Christianity was omnipresent. The effect of this was that people did not give opinions in class discussions that did not align with those values … I did not feel able to raise other perspectives on homosexuality. I felt a real risk of expulsion.” This is not exactly a good omen for an accredited institution devoted to the vocation of free thought. (Say what you will about loony leftism on the average secular college campus, but keep in mind that no student at York or UBC ever risked expulsion for refusing to uphold secular humanism.)
TWU president Bob Kuhn has so far framed the case against accreditation as anti-Christian bigotry, the obvious and familiar stance of the religious right. Less obvious and more interesting in this debate, though, is the apparent willingness
of otherwise liberal thinkers to champion the law school, not in solidarity with religionists, but out of sheer annoyance at the triumphalism of gay activists. In the Globe and Mail recently, Konrad Yakabuski, who is in favour of accrediting TWU, argues that gay rights activists in North America “are winning-just not fast enough for some fanatics, who seek to blacklist even those who object to gay marriage based on sincerely held religious or moral grounds.”
According to this philosophy, discriminating against gays is reprehensible if you’re an unthinking brute who is simply grossed out by sodomy: a Tucker Max type or some swashbuckling cast member of Duck Dynasty. But oppose gay marriage, or expel a gay married student from your law school for more refined reasons-because you are a man of God, or you read a compelling sociology study about the inviolability of the heterosexual nuclear family, and you can bask comfortably in your homophobia.
The law school, slated to open in 2016, has the support of lawyers in British Columbia and the B.C. government, but the Law Society of Upper Canada believes its sexuality policy is discriminatory. Ontario’s lawyers voted 28-21 against accrediting the school; the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society followed suit, refusing to accredit TWU unless it amends its covenant’s discriminatory requirements or allows students to forgo signing the covenant altogether. New Brunswick’s law society is scheduled to vote on the issue in June. The consequences for future TWU law graduates are great: they will not be able to article or practise law in provinces where their school is not accredited.
TWU’s covenant isn’t new, but its presence at a law school is particularly controversial. “If you’re going to teach the law,” says Douglas Judson, an Osgoode Hall law student in Toronto arguing against the law school’s accreditation, “you have a duty to propagate Charter values.” A duty: not a legal obligation. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms may forbid government discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but TWU is a private, religious institution. It doesn’t have to toe the government line. Besides, there are all kinds of gay-friendly law schools out there, jam-packed with gender-neutral bathrooms and “safe spaces” for every letter in that constantly expanding variegated acronym-so why can’t the Christians have an accredited “safe space” of their own?
It’s simple: we shouldn’t accredit TWU’s law school for the same reason we wouldn’t likely accredit a medical school that treated homosexuality as biologically and psychologically disordered. Like medicine, ethics is a science too; and blind absolutism makes for bad science. Consider the following excerpt from the affidavit of Jill Bishop, a lesbian who attended TWU in the mid-2000s and now supports gay activist Trevor Loke’s constitutional challenge of the B.C. government’s decision to approve the law school. “I observed that the lens of evangelical Christianity was omnipresent. The effect of this was that people did not give opinions in class discussions that did not align with those values … I did not feel able to raise other perspectives on homosexuality. I felt a real risk of expulsion.” This is not exactly a good omen for an accredited institution devoted to the vocation of free thought. (Say what you will about loony leftism on the average secular college campus, but keep in mind that no student at York or UBC ever risked expulsion for refusing to uphold secular humanism.)
TWU president Bob Kuhn has so far framed the case against accreditation as anti-Christian bigotry, the obvious and familiar stance of the religious right. Less obvious and more interesting in this debate, though, is the apparent willingness
of otherwise liberal thinkers to champion the law school, not in solidarity with religionists, but out of sheer annoyance at the triumphalism of gay activists. In the Globe and Mail recently, Konrad Yakabuski, who is in favour of accrediting TWU, argues that gay rights activists in North America “are winning-just not fast enough for some fanatics, who seek to blacklist even those who object to gay marriage based on sincerely held religious or moral grounds.”
According to this philosophy, discriminating against gays is reprehensible if you’re an unthinking brute who is simply grossed out by sodomy: a Tucker Max type or some swashbuckling cast member of Duck Dynasty. But oppose gay marriage, or expel a gay married student from your law school for more refined reasons-because you are a man of God, or you read a compelling sociology study about the inviolability of the heterosexual nuclear family, and you can bask comfortably in your homophobia.