If you take a look at the image above, you’ll see Catholic teachers from the province of Ontario in Canada marching in a gay rights rally. That should not surprise you, as they also march in pro-abortion (and infanticide) rallies. In Canada, the Catholic school system isn’t a private school system. It’s a government-run system, funded by the secular left government.

Here is the article from the Toronto Sun, by famous Canadian conservative Brian Lilley:

In the name of diversity, a Catholic school in Renfrew suspended a student and had him arrested for saying there are only two genders.

Josh Alexander was suspended last November over comments made about gender in class and told he couldn’t return to class until he recanted.

On Monday, Alexander returned to class and was promptly met by the vice-principal, arrested by two local police officers and charged with trespassing. The… former student of St. Joseph’s Catholic High School [said] that he made comments during a class discussion on gender.“It was about male students using female washrooms, gender dysphoria and male breastfeeding. Everyone was sharing their opinions on it, any student who wanted to was participating, including the teacher,” Alexander said.

“I said there were only two genders, and you were born either a male or a female, and that got me into trouble. And then I said that gender doesn’t trump biology.”

Remember – this student’s parent’s paid their taxes to get access to these public schools. This is the danger of paying for a service through mandatory taxes. In the private sector, you only pay a service or product provider when you want what they are selling. But in the public sector, you pay first, through your taxes, and then they decide what to serve you.

Most of the employees of these public schools are going through life on easy mode. They do worthless non-STEM degrees. They avoid competitive pressures that are in the private sector. They have no consumers to answer to. They just do what feels good to them. And their students graduate and cannot even read or write. No teacher faces career consequences for failing to produce educated students – because the union protects them from consequences.

By the way, Canada only has a minority of evangelical Protestants. Most of their “Christians” are “Catholic”, like Joe Biden is Catholic. These are not religious people. They don’t take the Bible seriously, any more than an atheist would take the Bible seriously. If a genuine Christian shows up, they call the police and have him arrested.

Progressives in America like to think that Europe is very far ahead of us. And since Europe is more progressive than us, we should become more progressive to catch up to them. But what happens when the Europeans have gone further down the road of progressivism, and they turn back because it led them to a dead end?

Here’s the latest from Daily Wire, about an expert in gender dysphoria named Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala.

Excerpt:

Finland’s leading expert on pediatric gender medicine says “four out of five” children will grow out of their gender confusion.

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, the chief psychiatrist at Tampere University, Finland’s largest pediatric gender clinic, recently had an interview with the country’s top newspaper about her reluctance to recommend surgical and chemical sex change services for minors who identify as transgender.

Dr. Kaltiala explained that while it is “important to accept the child as they are,” it is also necessary to recognize that it is common for children to strongly identify with the opposite sex at some point in their lives, but four out of five children who identify as transgender will grow out of it during puberty.

And what about the argument that if we don’t let children make permanent, life-altering decisions without adult supervision, then they will end themselves?

This:

Transgender advocacy groups… frequently rely on the debunked affirm-or-suicide narrative to lobby for early medicalization of childhood gender dysphoria.

Dr. Kaltiala calls the notion that hormone treatments and legal gender recognition for minors are urgently needed due to increased suicide risk “purposeful disinformation” and “irresponsible.” Suicidal thoughts and behavior in young people with “gender identity” issues are related to concurrent psychiatric disorders, not just “unaffirmed” gender, she explained.

“Mentally healthy young people who experience their gender in a way that differs from their biological body are not automatically suicidal,” said Dr. Kaltiala.

Here’s a study:

In a large Swedish study, suicide mortality significantly increased among adults who received sex-change treatments, and a Finnish study found that the mental health of many minors who received hormonal care deteriorated.

“Therefore, it is not justified to tell the parents of young people experiencing transgenderism that the young person is at risk of suicide without corrective treatment and that the danger can be countered with gender reassignment treatment,” says Dr. Kaltiala. She recommends not beginning medicalization before adulthood.

If I get asked about these issues at work, I just come to my blog and dig up these articles. I hope you get some use out of my blog when it’s your turn to debate.

A friend of mine knows the author of this article in the Wall Street Journal. The article is about Texas Tech, which is supposed to be a merit-based, professional university. And yet now we find out that the faculty is screening job candidates to prefer candidates who toe the secular left line on wokeness. Let’s take a look.

This article is from the Wall Street Journal. (archived)

Amidst the explosion of university diversity, equity and inclusion policies, Texas Tech’s biology department adopted its own DEI motion promising to “require and strongly weight a diversity statement from all candidates.” These short, written declarations are meant to summarize an academic job seeker’s past and potential contributions to DEI efforts on campus.

[…]At Texas Tech University, a candidate for a faculty job in the department of biological sciences was flagged by the department’s search committee for not knowing the difference between “equality” and “equity.” Another was flagged for his repeated use of the pronoun “he” when referring to professors. Still another was praised for having made a “land acknowledgment” during the interview process. A land acknowledgment is a statement noting that Native Americans once lived in what is now the United States.

[…]One Texas Tech search committee penalized a candidate for espousing race-neutrality in teaching. The candidate “mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally,” the evaluation notes. “This indicates a lack of understanding of equity and inclusion issues.”

Another search committee flagged a candidate for failing to properly understand “the difference between equity and equality, even on re-direct,” noting that this suggests a “rather superficial understanding of DEI more generally.” This distinction arises frequently in DEI training, always as a markedly ideological talking point. According to the schema, equality means equal opportunity, but, to use the words of Vice President Kamala Harris, “Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place.” Somehow, failing to explain that distinction reflects poorly on a biologist.

The biology department’s search committees also rewarded fluency in the language of identity politics. An immunology candidate was praised for awareness of the problems of “unconscious bias.” “Inclusivity in lab” was listed as a virology candidate’s strength: “her theme will be diversity, and she will actively work to creating the culture—e.g. enforce code of conduct, prevent microaggressions etc.” Another candidate’s strengths included “Land acknowledgement in talk.”

Many critics rightly point out that diversity statements invite viewpoint discrimination. DEI connotes a set of highly contestable social and political views. Requiring faculty to catalog their commitment to those views necessarily blackballs anybody who dissents from an orthodoxy that has nothing to do with scientific competence.

[…]One cell biology candidate was given a “red flag” for alleged “microaggressions towards women faculty.” The report names two examples: “assuming one junior faculty was a graduate student” and “minimizing the difficulties of women in the US by comparing to worse situations elsewhere.”

The first thing to say is isn’t it wonderful that this fellow was able to get his hands on these documents and expose the school? Already, the school has announced that it is eliminating these DEI policies. Just like that, in one day, one man made a big difference. It’s important to say that, because so many people today like to justify being passive by adopting cynical points of view. “Both political parties are the same”, “the system is rigged”, “even the people on my team are not as committed as me”, etc. They want to appear to be conservative, but without having to do any actions. Well, real conservatism is done with actions – actions that get results.

It looks like even STEM departments are losing their vision about what happens when a young person exchanges tens of thousands of dollars and years of their lives for knowledge. They think that we find value in being taught morality by secular leftists, and so we should be paying for that. But from my perspective, work is very difficult. People expect you to know how to write code. Just take a look at any job description for a programmer. You’re going to see a ton of programming languages (Kotlin), frameworks (Axon), services (Kafka), and libraries (React), listed there. People expect you to know how to use them. And they want months and years of experience with these tools. You don’t have time in college to waste on secular leftist indoctrination. You need to earn money.

Right now, I would be very careful about getting into any university that adopted these Diversity and Inclusion policies. When you get into a private sector workplace, you are expected to perform. You want to work 40 hours to move your cards, not 60 hours. So choose where you go to school wisely.