School’s out for summer but the role of religion in schools remains a hot topic. The latest controversies revolve around a Toronto school allowing Muslim prayer services while another involves the refusal of Catholic school boards to allow Gay-Straight Alliances and their subsequent attempts to meet their Charter obligations to gay students without violating their religious principles.

Throughout the debate. few have challenged the widespread view that religion is a force for good and accommodating religious practice is a good thing, likely to increase tolerance. The debate has centred around how much and what manner of accommodation should be encouraged. Few have considered two other possibilities: 1) that religious practice and accommodations are the biggest barriers to tolerance and equality in publicly funded Catholic schools and 2) the manner in which religion is presented to students in public schools violates the spirit of the Supreme Court decision which outlawed religious instruction.

Catholic doctrine clearly states that practising homosexuals deserve eternal damnation. The current pope and numerous encyclicals leave no room for ambiguity on this question. Yet Catholic teachers are expected to foster a sense of tolerance and respect while simultaneously teaching that any gay person who acts on their feelings is an abomination before God. Having taught religion in a Catholic school, I can assure you this is quite impossible. Catholic apologists argue that church doctrine does not discriminate against gays but teaches adherents to “hate the sin, not the sinner.” This is the same position taken by the church toward pedophiles, rapists, murderers and war criminals. Does anyone seriously believe that classing gays with the most hated members of society will encourage heterosexual students to accept and befriend them?

Proponents of public Catholic education point out that it is constitutionally protected. The fact that gay students enjoy equal constitutional protection to be free from discrimination is seldom mentioned. Eventually a choice will have to be made between the rights of the publicly funded Catholic school boards and the rights of its vulnerable gay students. The choice is similar to that faced by the Toronto District School Board: should it accommodate Muslim students, allowing services which segregate girls and exclude menstruating ones as they are considered unclean? If a public school board permits this practice, what message does it send to its students, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, about its belief in, and commitment to, gender equality? Again the choice is clear: accommodate religion or protect equality rights.

While Catholic school boards enjoy constitutional protections, a Supreme Court decision banned public school boards from delivering religious instruction declaring that, while schools could “study” religion, they could not teach it. Thus, the TDSB takes a few minutes at the beginning of several school days to describe various religious “days of significance” like Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr, Diwali and Passover. The celebration or festival is described in reverential tones along with some key facts about the religion and its adherents. The facts are uniformly positive and the religions as well as their key figures are unfailingly presented as beneficent, wise and just. The entire process is done in the same manner as announcements about heroes of black history or the moment of silence on Remembrance Day. Students are left with the impression that believers and religious practice have always had a positive impact on society. No mention is made of the violence and hatred contained in most religious texts, or the consequent bloodshed and suffering these texts have caused. As there is no compulsory religion course in public schools, this is the only religious education most students receive. To present religion in this way is not to “study” it. If I only taught my students that Hitler fixed the German economy, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin provided free health care and education, few would argue that my class had studied these leaders or their ideologies. To examine religions so uncritically is to offer them tacit endorsement.

The Bible and Qur’an teach that gays, members of other religions and non-believers will not only suffer eternal damnation, but that it is just that this occur. These teachings are a matter of faith to most believers. All these holy texts also sanction slavery, genocide, misogyny and unspeakable cruelty. I submit that one cannot concurrently endorse multiculturalism and these texts. While believers correctly argue they contain much that is beautiful and compassionate, surely students should be taught the whole picture so they may draw their own conclusions. If schools are going to “study” religion, they cannot simply cherry-pick the popular portions. Each religion must be critically examined, warts and all. Learning about religion is an important, if not essential, part of any decent education and religion has much to recommend it. However, as with any subject, students deserve both sides of the story. Otherwise religious education quickly becomes indoctrination.

Joe Killoran teaches law and politics at Malvern Collegiate Institute in the Toronto District School Board, and formerly taught religion, law, history and English at Neil McNeil in the Toronto Catholic District School Board.