By Patrick B. Craine TORONTO, Ontario, September 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As part of their campaign to scrap Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s equity and inclusive education strategy, Campaign Life Coalition is warning that the strategy threatens to embed a systematic and unjust religious discrimination within school boards’ hiring and advancement policies.

Jim Hughes, CLC national president, said that the strategy “clearly makes for discrimination against those who don’t hold to the Ministry’s homosexualist version of ‘equity’, both in terms of advancement in the board and in terms of hiring practices.”

The charge is based on a section in the Ministry’s documents that recommends the school boards incorporate “selection criteria” for promotion to advanced positions that includes “demonstrated commitment, knowledge, and skills related to equity and inclusive education principles and practices.” (See the Guidelines for Policy Development and Implementation, page 50).

“Could this mean that an Evangelical Christian or a Muslim teacher, for example, who is known to consider homosexual acts as sinful, would be disqualified from consideration for career advancement?” CLC asks in their analysis of the equity strategy.

The group notes further that the Ministry’s guidelines for boards implementing equity policies tell teachers to take it upon themselves to mould their classrooms’ beliefs towards the government’s version of “equity.”

The document includes a classroom “self-reflection tool” for teachers, which states: “In my classroom, I … assume responsibility for examining and taking steps to modify personal beliefs and biases that are inconsistent with equity and inclusive education principles.”

“Could this ever lead to a situation where teachers are pressured to act against their conscience or religious beliefs, in order to become compliant with ‘inclusive education principles’?” CLC asks.

They point out that gay-activists assured Canadians during their same-sex “marriage” push that homosexual “marriage” would have no effect on heterosexuals.  “Just five years later, parents are facing Gay/Straight Alliances in their children’s schools and kindergarteners bringing home library books portraying two lesbian mommies and two homosexual dads,” they note.  “Should we accept more reassurances from the same people?”

“Depending how it is implemented, it could actually lead to a form of reverse discrimination,” said CLC’s Dan Di Rocco, a former principal in the Catholic system.  “In the hands of people that have a more radical agenda, it gives them all kinds of openings.”

For more information about Campaign Life Coalition’s campaign against the Ontario equity strategy, including contact information, visit the website here.