Justifying Bill 18: A Critique of Kymlicka’s Comprehensive Neutrality

Manitoba’s Bill 18 provides students the legal right to form gay-straight alliance student groups within denominational and dissentient schools. Religious opponents of Bill 18 claim that the law unjustifiably imposes a homogenous moral worldview on religious families. I argue that if we appeal to Will Kymlicka’s comprehensive neutralist theory of political morality to justify Bill 18, the religious complaint is problematically vindicated. I argue that Kymlicka appeals to two bases of neutrality that ultimately fail to distinguish his view from the perfectionist theories of political morality that he officially rejects. Due to this internal inconsistency, the priority of Kymlicka’s preferred moral practices remains unjustified. For those of us who believe that Bill 18 is morally justified, an alternative approach to explaining this intuition is required.

The GSA Difference: LGBTQ and Ally Experiences in High Schools with and without Gay-Straight Alliances

We examine the lived experiences of high-school students who participatedin lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-centered activismof some kind, highlighting the promise of gay-straight alliance groups bycomparing the experiences of students at schools with gay-straightalliances (GSA schools) with the experiences of students at schools thatdid not have an LGBTQ-specific group (no-GSA schools). We compare studentsat GSA and no-GSA schools based on their experiences of harassment,experiences of support from authority figures, and patterns of friendships.We find that students at both types of schools experienced harassment andheard negative comments about lesbian and gay people. However, students atGSA schools reported more support from teachers and administrators thanstudents at no-GSA schools, who have stories of teachers and administratorsactively opposing equality for LGBTQ people. Students at GSA schoolsreported a wide variety of friendships across sexual identities, whilestudents at no-GSA schools felt more isolated and withdrawn. Thismuch-needed qualitative comparative analysis of students’ experiencesbrings a human face to the improved quality of life that schools withgay-straight alliances can bring to young people.

Laborare est Orare

Despite regional, religious, and political conservatism and fears of donor alienation and diocesan disapproval, a small group of faculty, staff, and avowed sisters at the private Catholic institution described in this article successfully achieved approval for the development of a gay-straight alliance. Using documents from official Church doctrine, researching benchmarks from Catholic institutions across the region, and demonstrating unmet student needs of the mostly closeted LGBTQ student population, the committee successfully obtained approval to host a discussion series examining the intersections and confrontations of LGBTQ lived experiences with spiritual practices and religious teaching. This chapter not only tells that story but provides a tactical model for others seeking to overcome barriers of institutional religious-based heterosexism to carve out a safe space for LGBTQ students while respecting the religious views students and employees of private, religious institutions have agreed to uphold.