GSAs, polyblend uniforms and the inherent flaw of a buffet-style Bible

Dalton McGuinty recently announced new anti-bullying legislation, which would, among other things, make public schools legally required to allow any student organization that supports equity among race, gender, ability and sexual orientation. So that means we finally get GSAs, right? Not so much. Due to a three-word addendum to the gay-straight alliance part of the legislation (“or another name”) school boards could, theoretically, be able to shove the actual “openly gay” part of it back into the closet.

But that’s their prerogative, right? They’re just trying to instill Christian values, which includes the sanctity of marriage, right?

I hate to go back to the “I went to a Catholic high school” well again, but I will anyway, because it’s a nice little glimpse into what a hypocritical little underworld the whole thing is, and because I’ve forgotten more about the Bible than most homophobic Bible-thumpers will ever know. Anyway, to understand the arguments against homosexuality according to Catholic schools, we have to take two things for granted:

1. The Bible is the law of God, and we must uphold it in its entirety.
2. Homosexuality is in direct defiance of God.

Here’s the thing: the book of the Bible that specifically mentions homosexuality as a sin is Leviticus. Leviticus, if you’ve never actually read it, is fucking crazy. Not only does it ban homosexuality, but it also bans eating shellfish and bacon, getting tattoos or wearing gold. But hey, that’s fine! It’s not like students are forced to wear giant gold cross necklaces while eating their complimentary shrimp cocktails, right?

BUT, and this is a big one, Leviticus also bans any clothing combining two different fabrics. Or in layman’s terms: polyblend. Now, think for a second here: how many Catholic schools make students wear school uniforms? How many do you know that check the tags of their students’ shirts to make sure they’re not wearing polyester? Which means they have no problem upholding the “no gays” part of Leviticus but are completely okay with letting the polyblend thing slide, even though it’s part of the same book and violates the first part of the stance I mentioned above.

And the best part is, the school I went to made us wear polyblend. To attend the school, we were required to violate the code of the Bible. And don’t say that it’s an arbitrary rule, either. It’s in the exact same part of the Bible as the gay thing, so you can’t tell me that it’s a part you can just ignore.

So we have to conclude that there are parts of the Bible that are little more than arbitrary rules. We can pick and choose which parts we want to uphold and cite any passage we want to uphold our own viewpoint. And that’s exactly what they’re doing by keeping GSAs down and in the closet: citing arbitrary rules in the Bible and ignoring others to validate their point. They’re forcing their own beliefs on you, the taxpayers who are funding this shit.

But you know what? Fine! If they want to ban gays and back it up with whatever dogma they want to, no matter how flimsy, I’ll let them. But on one condition: any Catholic school board that wants to ban gay-straight alliances or push them into the closet must admit publicly that the reason for doing so involves their own personal opinions and hang-ups rather than any religious reasons, and that for all their high-fallutin’ Bible-thumping, they don’t want to uphold the one rule that Jesus actually gave them: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.