It was probably one of the best examples of the frustration of parents with woke school board edicts reaching the boiling point.
A group of parents attended a meeting of the York District Catholic School Board (YDCSB) Tuesday night to express their concern with a call to fly the Pride Progress flag in front of all schools and the education centre during Pride month in June.
Their concerns – likely more with the efforts of school boards to ram 2SLGBTQI ideology down the throats of young children than any actual homophobia – erupted into a huge drama with videos of them in the atrium of the YDCSB education centre rotunda surfacing in the legacy media and on social media channels.
This was after they were removed from the board meeting.
Police were also called to keep the peace.
In true fashion, the legacy media slanted their reports just enough to elicit predictable responses from the woke crowd.
They endeavoured to paint the parents and the board – which has not made a decision on whether to fly the Pride flag – as a bunch of neanderthals and all the sheep on social media (most of them not gay) jumped into the fray.
What the media did not do is clarify that the flag proposed is the Progress Flag – not the traditional rainbow flag.
The Progress flag is a radical queer variation on the more commonly known rainbow flag, the colours of which symbolize the fight gays my age undertook to gain rights.
The Progress version, created in 2018, includes black and brown stripes that represent marginalized black communities and pink, light blue and white stripes from the transgender flag.
The ridiculously divisive flag, intended to pander to the queer activists and indicative of the times, suggests that gay and lesbians of colour or trans folk are far more oppressed than those of us who are gay or lesbian and are white.
Front and centre in the middle of all this was Toronto Catholic board teacher Paolo DeBuono about whom I’d just written a story.
He turned up to the meeting to deliver a deputation, using the premise that his child was once a YDCSB student.
According to accounts of what occurred, when his deputation was pulled, he turned up in the atrium to confront the protesting parents, claiming he was used to “negative attention” for trying to make Catholic schools “more inclusive.”
Pflag York Region chimed in contending the parents were using their religion to mask their hate.
Having covered this issue extensively over the past year and being gay myself, I would note a few things.
For one thing, De Buono – who blocked me on Twitter Friday – has no business inserting himself into the issue if he wants to remain a teacher with the Toronto District Catholic School Board.
If he doesn’t like the religion they teach, he can take his inclusive message elsewhere.
There are many faith-based schools that do not embrace the idea of flying the rainbow flag on their property – in particular the radical Progress flag.
I don’t see such flags at any Jewish day schools and would venture to guess the same at Muslim schools.
Just because the board won’t fly the flag – which to me is now being used as a test of whether one is virtuous or not – doesn’t mean they are homophobic, or hateful, or whatever ugly names were tossed at the parents and the school board bureaucrats.
I respect the board bureaucrats for standing up to this bullying by the activists and DeBuono.
As for the parents, I suspect they are tired of having the activists ramming these issues down their throats and are simply concerned that their kids get a proper academic and religious education.
After all, isn’t that what Catholic schools are all about?
Trans activist Julia Malott perhaps put it best:
She’s right.
Radical LGBT activists have turned into a cabal of intolerant bullies who name and shame those who don’t see the world precisely their way.
As a gay woman, who is grateful for the advocacy of years gone by, I am quite frankly disgusted by it.
