Skip to content

Whose faith are we protecting? Op-Ed

2SLGBTQ+ alumnus from Oakville expresses why the Pride flag needs to be seen above Halton Catholic District School Board schools during June.
pride-colours-paint-steve-johnson-unsplash

When I was three, I told my family that I was a boy and a girl. I remember repeating this once or twice in kindergarten, and then the words went away. 

When I was in primary school, I had a very close relationship with God. I talked to God in my head all the time. I prayed every night, and I gave thanks freely and joyfully for the beauty of the natural world and the mysterious complexity of human nature, which I was even then beginning to sense. 

I was always a cheerful kid and creative. Sensitive. I look back at that young me, and I feel so much empathy and tenderness for them. By the time I turned 10, suicidal ideation had become an unfortunate fixture in my internal landscape. If you had asked me why I thought about suicide so often, I would honestly have not been able to say. It was a dark, thick veil between me and the immediate experience of my life. There was a sense of innate wrongness in me. More than adolescent awkwardness. It was a wrongness that made my joyful moments feel stunted, less real, than other people’s joyful moments. I now know the name of this feeling of wrongness - gender dysphoria.

It took me until the age of 30 to realize what my young self intuitively understood at age 3. I’m not a masculine woman; I’m much closer to a feminine man. I say “man” because it’s easier to use the language that more of you will understand. If we go a little deeper, I am something different from a woman or man. And so many of us are. Non-binary people, gender non-conforming, trans, agender, genderfluid, all of these are valid ways of saying: binary gender as the sole way of understanding gender has served us for a long time, but it is not serving us lovingly and joyfully any longer. 

Just as humanity has increased its knowledge of the beautiful mystery of nature through observation, poetry, prayer and science, so we are coming to better know the beautiful complexity of gender through the sharing of lived experiences. Trans people have existed since the beginning of time. We aren’t going anywhere. And make no mistake, we have the spark of divinity in us just as much as our cisgender neighbours.

Thankfully, when I left my HCDSB high school in Oakville and moved away, I found support, understanding and acceptance. My thoughts of self-harm quietened as I developed a stronger and more compassionate sense of who I am in my very real and legitimate gender.

This Monday, the Halton Catholic District School Board board of trustees (9 people) will vote on whether or not to reduce the risk of their 2SLGBTQ+ students engaging in self-harm. I’m not trying to be dramatic. Social workers, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, parents and their children all around the world are saying the same thing: Supporting 2SLGBTQ+ young people (which flying the Pride flag would do) dramatically reduces their risk of self-harm and death by suicide. 

The trustees opposed to the motion say that their faith compels them to do so. What about the faith that our young people, our parents, our extended communities in Halton put into our board of trustees, with the assumption that they will make the decisions that the majority of their constituents want? 

What about the faith that young Catholic 2SLGBTQ+ people have in a God who will love and cherish them? Sadly, I lost my closeness to God by the time I left my HCDSB elementary school. I couldn’t see a place for people like me or me at the table. We were erased, our genders and sexualities denied and shamed and repressed. 

This week, ever since the hateful anti-2SLGBTQ+ comments made by some of the members of the board and their anonymous community supporters, I have heard of three young people in Oakville who have decided that they will not be confirmed. They can’t unread and unhear the hate that has been exposed amongst some members of their local community. The trustees who are campaigning for a No decision have driven them from the flock. 

If the vote comes back negative on Monday, we can assume that this disappointing stance against love and diversity will only serve to rip more young people from the comfort of their faith. 

My story is not a rare one. I hope that by writing about it here, more people will understand why small gestures like the HCDSB voting to fly a Pride flag during the month of June is such a big deal to 2SLGBTQ+ students. Sometimes it is these small gestures of recognition and welcoming that can pull us back from the dark places where isolation leads us. 

I hope so much that the trustees will vote along with the majority of their constituents who have reached out to them over this issue this past week have expressed: fly the flag, protect 2SLGBTQ+ kids. 

Submitted by Araz Ahmed