By taking a “hard-line approach” to banning gay-straight alliances, the Halton Catholic District School Board will alienate moderate Ontarians and could put all Catholic school funding at risk, gay trustee Paul Marai has warned.

However, a board committee voted Tuesday to recommend schools allow broad equity clubs called By Your SIDE Spaces (an acronym for safety, inclusivity, diversity and equity) instead of gay-straight alliances (GSAs), as part of a policy to make schools more welcoming to all.

“Speaking for students, they’re satisfied with these SIDE Spaces because they address so much more than just homophobia,” said student trustee Christiane Peric.

Added trustee John Morrison; “If this policy passes, there won’t be GSAs in our schools, because we’ve got something better.”

However education director Michael Pautler said the By Your SIDE groups would still deal head-on with homophobia.

“If the question is, is a By Your SIDE group somewhere where a student can go and say, ‘I’m gay and I’m being bullied and I’m feeling worried and hurt,’ and get support, the answer is yes.”

Hundreds of Halton Catholic parents told the board they do not want gay-straight clubs in their children’s schools, in a wave of feedback on the issue reviewed Tuesday by the board’s policy development committee

The policy will go to the board for a final vote April 5.

In letters calling gay-straight clubs everything from a “sin” to a “Pandora’s box,” parents, grandparents and ratepayers argued that to allow such groups would flout the Catholic church’s stand on homosexuality, which accepts homosexual people but does not condone the homosexual act.

The board received some 300 letters from individuals, school councils, clergy and groups.

Egale Canada, the national advocacy group for homosexual rights, argued that only a gay-straight alliance offers the support needed to make students of different sexualities feel accepted.

In contrast, one anonymous group of “concerned Catholics,” proposed a sort of gay-to-straight club that would help “students with orientation problems . . . turn away from sin.”

The board withdrew an outright ban on gay-straight alliances earlier this winter, but proposed By Your SIDE to make schools more welcoming for all students regardless of race, origin, ability or sexual orientation.

A new Ontario policy on equity and inclusion requires schools to prohibit discrimination on all grounds, including sexual orientation, and requires schools set up either gay-straight alliances or other “peer forums” to help all students feel welcome.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Catholic board has cancelled a symposium scheduled for Saturday, as well as a subsequent public session March 30, to discuss its draft equity and inclusive policy — even though invitations have already been sent out.

Board spokesperson Emmy Milne said the change was due to scheduling difficulties; both events will be rescheduled but no dates have been set.

However, some Catholic community members were upset over speaker Chris D’Souza, a well-regarded expert in equity education who has spoken to many boards — including Catholic ones.

An online Catholic magazine also criticized his pro-gay views.

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D’Souza was the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board’s equity and diversity officer and is now a course director with York University’s faculty of education.

He said his talks don’t cover same-sex marriage, as the online magazine states, but that his message is clear: “Every child has a right to get an education in Ontario, free of any form of bias, harassment, bullying . . . my stance, very firmly, is that in publicly funded education, educators must welcome and value all their students.”

With files from Kristin Rushowy