B.C. Court: Gay Books OK
for Library, Not Class
The British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled September 20 that school trustees in Surrey, B.C., had not improperly used religious grounds when they voted in 1997 to ban three books about same-sex couples from kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. The court also noted in its decision that Belinda’s Bouquet, Asha’s Mums, and One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dads, Blue Dads, had not been challenged as library resources but only as “recommended learning resources” and would consequently remain in the school library.
The unanimous decision by the three-member appeals court overturned a 1998 provincial court ruling that the Surrey school board had violated a requirement that schools be conducted on strictly secular principles, according to the September 22 Vancouver Sun.
The court determined that the schools must be “pluralist and inclusive in the widest sense.” John Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at Vancouver’s evangelical Regent College, said the decision is crucial because it means Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and others who object to homosexuals won’t be treated as “second-class citizens” whose moral views don’t count in a secular society, the Sun reported.
Posted October 2, 2000.
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