When parents refused to send their kids to school on “Pink Day” — thinking it was promoting homosexuality, rather than anti-bullying — Thorncliffe teacher Susan Mabey got her first inkling that the controversy about the new health curriculum wasn’t just about sex.

It was also about homophobia.

With a vocal parent group in the neighbourhood now openly stating their worries about gay teachers in the school or even “homosexuality books” — and after seeing gay colleagues leave the school in recent years because of an atmosphere in which they felt vulnerable — Mabey decided someone needed to be the “lightning rod,” to speak openly about what’s going on.

“I have been on the front lines of the gay and lesbian movement since the early ’80s, and we fought long and hard for rights that are enshrined,” she said in an exclusive interview with the Star on Thursday, as 200 parents and children stood on the sidewalk out front of the school protesting the updated sex-ed curriculum.

“At Thorncliffe, we have toned down everything; we have been trying to be accommodating for too long,” she said. “There are gay teachers, there are gay students and transgender kids” in the school, as there are in society — and kids have questions about that, and about sex, about kissing and boyfriends, and the new curriculum gives them the facts.

“There needs to be a lightning rod; I can’t lose anything … what I can gain is, maybe some parents hear a different story. Right now, the story they are hearing is, basically, hatred.”

As for the consequences of speaking out and being “out” with all families at the school, she said: “I am willing to sit with empty classes if that’s the way it works out.”

While the anti-sex-ed protests have happened in pockets around the province, no school has been harder hit than Thorncliffe, where on Thursday just 533 of 1,260 kids showed up for class.

Some parents have kept their children out of school since the start of school in September, setting up a makeshift school in the park and community centre nearby, bringing Thorncliffe’s enrolment down by 200 on an ongoing basis.

While the opposition has included groups of many religions, a diverse coalition that includes Muslim and newcomer groups spoke out last week in favour of the new sex-ed curriculum, to counter the vocal opponents.

Thorncliffe principal Jeff Crane said he believes the opposition now is more about a fear of homosexuality than the sex-ed curriculum itself, all of two lessons a year, for which kids can be removed from school.

And what’s been happening outside the school is taking a toll on morale inside.

Even though it is believed to be a small group agitating, teachers “are afraid of parents, afraid of their own security,” and a few gay teachers in recent years have transferred out because they “couldn’t stand being in the closet,” said Mabey.

The day graffiti was sprayed on the school saying “shame on you” was “devastating” for the school and staff morale and spirit, she added.

That day, Mabey stood near the entrance of the school, in front of the graffiti, because “I could not have that hateful sign be the only thing that parents arriving at school saw as they entered our property.”

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Families have been bullied for sending their children to school and been told the public system is going to “indoctrinate their kids into homosexuality,” she said.

“That has made it difficult to go on teaching with a hopeful heart,” said Mabey, who was refused ordination in the early 1980s by the United Church, sparking discussions that led to the church agreeing to allow openly gay ministers later that decade. (She later became a minister with the Metropolitan Community Church in downtown Toronto.)

Mabey went back to school in 2001 — at age 47 — to become a teacher and spent a year at Victoria Park school, where she was open about her sexuality with families and where her partner was welcomed at school events.

At Thorncliffe, where she’s worked for 12 years, she has never felt personally targeted, but she is also not as open as she was at Vic Park. She feels she has strong relationships with parents, and if they or kids ask, she is honest, telling them she shares her life with a woman. Otherwise, she is not forthcoming about it, she says.

When she taught Grade 2 last year, she read a book with the kids about same-sex parents as part of a unit on diverse families. This year, while she was teaching Grade 1, kids at carpet time were already talking about two boys wanting to kiss each other.

“Teachers have to do this all the time,” she said, adding no one complained about her using the two-moms book with her class last year.

She hopes, by speaking out, “that people will begin to question what they think they know about gay people … I hope they realize their children have not been indoctrinated by me; they realize their children have not been damaged by me, or influenced by me to be homosexual.”

A posting on the Facebook page of the Thorncliffe Parents’ Association accuses the school of “not disclosing the fact about homosexuality books, poems, same sex community partners and that you are hiring same-sex teachers … what about the HOMOSEXUALITY, GENDER identity and so called community partners to have access to indoctrinate children with more explicit info on the subject with examples?”

Khalid Mahmood, who has been at the forefront of the Thorncliffe protests and is a member of the parents’ association, said he was not aware of a Facebook post that raised concerns about gay teachers. The association is not upset about homosexual teachers in the school, but rather community agencies coming in to talk to the kids about equity and sexual orientation, he said.

Accusations of homophobia are unfounded, he added. “We respect all people” even if it is a lifestyle that parents may not approve of.

“We don't oppose gay teachers in the school,” he said. “We are simple parents and we aren’t against anyone ... We respect everyone, but do not try to impose values of one particular group or another.”

Mahmood noted that during the first week of the makeshift school, students there were learning about different kinds of families, “including two moms and two dads, so acceptance is already there.”