UPDATED: No Pride In York

 

Although I make no claim to psychic powers, I can pretty safely predict someone who will soon lose her job. Her name is Dina Mayr, a teacher in the York Catholic District School Board.

Ms. Mayr, a 23-year employee of the board, has taken public exception to York's refusal to allow the Pride flag to be raised at any buildings within their jurisdiction. She

is the parent of a transgender child, who went to a school she taught at. She feels “utterly ashamed” to be a part of a system that made this decision.

“It seems to be a worldwide movement of hatred that has just infiltrated school boards, including our own,” she said. While her son has now graduated, Mayr used to feel like he was safe with her advocating behind the scenes.

“I can’t believe that a Catholic school, a Catholic system can stand by and allow that to continue to happen.”

Apparently, in the minds of some, raising the Pride flag is tantamount to surrendering to an 'agenda' that runs contrary to the Catholic faith. 

[B]oard chair Frank Alexander told reporters that trustees were advised by two archbishops that the flags don’t “align with our Catholic values.” 

"That’s fundamentally why I voted against it,” he said, noting schools that fly the flag would face consequences.

Apparently, the message of love, acceptance and compassion that permeates the New Testament means nothing to the powers-that-be, who seem more in tune with the Old Testament Yahweh, who was known to get His celestial nose out of joint on occasion, resulting in much smiting and tribulation.

But, I suppose, we must respect the doctrinal 'purity' of York's decision:

At York Catholic, Alexander was asked why the YCDSB is one of a few remaining boards that won’t fly the flag, and he said “what’s different about us is that we stand for our faith, we stand for Christ.”

The committee’s report, however, said “our Catholicity calls us to be inclusive, compassionate, and empathetic. Pope Francis continues to urge all of us to welcome LGBTQ members into the church, to demonstrate ‘tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us.’”

A political response riddled with hypocrisy, if there ever was one.

Getting back to vocal critic Dina Mayr and my prediction of a truncated career with York, allow me to tell you a story from my teaching days demonstrating that publicly opposing your employer, while perhaps principled, is never tolerated. 

In my final year or two of teaching, I had a terrible principal, one I regarded as a psychopath. My vice-principal was sane, but he was an overly sensitive man who saw those of us in the West Wing of the school  (the farthest geographic point from the administrators) as constantly conspiring against him and his ilk. (It wasn't true. We only occasionally conspired against him.) Anyway, he redeemed himself completely in my eyes after he left our school to become principal of a vocational school within our board. By all accounts, he did an excellent job for the students, so much so that he publicly railed against the board's decision to close his school.

Ultimately, his efforts failed, and he was slated to become the principal of a vocational school elsewhere when the board announced it had changed its mind and appointed someone else, on the pretext that in the closing days of his old school, an act of  vandalism under his watch. While they refused to comment on his fate, I later learned the board fired him. The same fate awaits Ms. Mayr, perhaps, for example, for something as trivial as unauthorized used of the photocopier. 

The lesson to be learned, a hard one, is this:

"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord [and the board].

UPDATE: Here is Michael Coren's take on the issue.