Chaplain's Corner

There has been a lot of talk about Bill 18, the Provincial Government’s Anti-bullying bill that has been tabled but not yet passed into Legislation (at least as of when I wrote this post). You might wonder, what does an Anti-bullying Bill have to do with the work of a hospital chaplain? Good question.

As you probably know, one of the things a chaplain does is support the staff of the facility. It is in this role that I have been involved with Bill 18. Some of the staff here at Bethesda have been quite upset by the tabling of this Bill and the implications it may have and have wanted to talk about the Bill to process their feelings and help formulate the reasons it has bothered them.

Being an American, and this being July 4th, I am reminded that freedom, the freedom to believe, the freedom to worship, the freedom to speak – FREEDOM – was what the United States, the place of my birth, where I still hold citizenship – FREEDOM is what the nation was founded on. Canada, although having a very different birth, is also a nation that believes that FREEDOM is of vital importance. When I speak of freedom and when we speak of it generally in public discourse, we do not mean the freedom to do anything you want, anytime you want, to anybody you want – that isn’t freedom but anarchy. But we speak of freedom in the sense that we live in a society of law and order where the state has no right to determine what we think, what we believe, how we live out our lives as long as we do that within the boundaries of law and order that protect the other person’s freedom as it does mine. As my Dad used to say, “Larry, your freedom ends at the tip of my nose.”

Our society has not always done the best job at respecting each others freedom. I grew up at the tail end of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. I lived in a community where in a high school of 3000 students there were less than a dozen people of color. I shared a locker with one of those people of color, my class mates, Larry Jenkins. Larry was a bright (brighter than I was), athletic (I never was athletic) and ambition young man. But more basic than that he was a fellow human being. Black – white, none of that mattered. But not everyone in the community felt that way. Prejudice was rampant; there were still people who practiced discrimination. I still remember some of the horrible events of that time of unrest.

One of the things I liked about Canada was the fact that it was more thoroughly inter-racial and there didn’t seem to be the stigma related to race and religion that I had grown up with as a young man in Pennsylvania. However Bill 18 has brought to the surface some of the tensions that I first felt as a young person, tensions that were many times fueled by fear and a willingness to limit another’s freedom.

Of course, if you have read the Carillon News at all over the last few months, you understand that one of the tensions surround Bill 18 is that many feel it will limit the freedom of Christian folks to openly believe that some forms of sexual orientation are contrary to the teachings of the Word of God. The fear is that in seeking to provide young people who believe that they were created with an other than heterosexual orientation safety in their schools; that in the same act young people who believe that such orientations are wrong will be silenced and summarily labeled hate mongers and bigots. In other words, the fear is that while granting one group freedom of expression another group will be stripped of their freedom of expression. Not a very good tradeoff, for if we pass laws to protect one group and in so doing create prejudice against another group we have not solved a problem at all, we have only exchange one problem for an equally discriminatory problem.

So what are we to do? As citizens of a nation that has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we must carefully guard the rights of every member of the society to believe as they see fit, even if their beliefs are objectionable or offensive to others. Not only do we need to guard the freedom to believe as each person sees fit, but we must protect each persons right to express their beliefs in a respectful way.

I am deeply saddened that many who claim the name “Christian” have felt it legitimate to treat those who disagree with their convictions so poorly. To stick with the Bill 18 issue; it is absolutely incongruent for a person who embraces the values of Christianity to treat a person who identifies as homosexual in a manner that is disrespectful. This doesn’t mean that a Christian shouldn’t say, “I believe that homosexuality is opposed to the teaching of God’s word.” It does mean that a Christian has no legitimate liberty, from God or anyone else, to treat a person who identifies as a homosexual with any less dignity and respect than he or she wants to be treated.

Convictions of the heart rarely yield to aggressive debate and certainly don’t yield to angry discrimination and harassment; if some claim to be followers of Jesus and can excuse mistreatment of another human being just because it is believed that they are wrong – shame on them. This “battle” over Bill 18 needs to be reframed and the dialogue that is needed should be about how we can preserve the freedom of all students to be free of harassment in their schools. If Gay Straight Alliances are legitimate in the public forum of a high school, than such alliances should not be solely about the universal approval of whatever the other believes: they shouldn’t be about convincing others that alternative sexualities are right and healthy. They mustn’t be about calling Christians bigots or homophobes because they believe that variant sexualities are wrong. But they should be about young people with oppositional ideologies getting together to learn to respect one another, despite their deep convictions about the lifestyles or behavioral choices of the other.

If understanding is what we seek, then there is no need to elevate the rights of one group above another. If equality is what we long for, then elevating a persecuted minority to a place of preferential treatment and relegating another group to being labeled ignorant bigots, making them the new persecuted minority, is hardly the way to go about it.

As an inter-faith chaplain, I have never been encouraged to deny my own faith convictions in order to care for those different than myself. But one of the standards of my profession is offering gracious respect to those who are different than I am in spiritual orientation and conviction, because it is in the context of gracious respect that care can be given and received by human beings. What Bill 18 can not do nor any bill for that matter is make people who are radically different respect each other and grant to one another the right to believe as they choose and with that right, live with the consequences of their choices.

I am afraid that all this fuss over Bill 18 has done the opposite of what its writers intended. Instead of softening the “battle lines” it has hardened them. Instead of promoting understanding, it is promoting a deepening of the prejudices that create the harassment that it seeks to resolve.

Grace filled respect for each other and the freedom God himself has given us to believe as we chose is what is needed. Unfortunately, that can not be legislated so unfortunately, the prejudice and bigotry will in all likelihood just go on and on, breaking human spirits and bringing dishonor to the One who is Love.