The bill — which could be voted upon in early 2013 — if passed, would cause problems for employers and service providers, said Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League.
“One of my biggest concerns about Bill C-279 is the adding of an undefined characteristic to the human rights code,” said McGarry. “It adds a subjective, self-defined category to what has been traditionally an objective list of grounds under which discrimination is prohibited.”
Put forward by NDP MP Randall Garrison, the bill passed second reading in the House of Commons earlier this year, with the support of more than a dozen Conservative MPs. In November, it passed through the House justice committee. It could come to a third reading vote in the House of Commons in 2013 any time after the MPs return to Ottawa Jan. 28 after their Christmas break.
Campaign Life Coalition urges members to contact their MPs to express their opposition.
Campaign Life cited the 2006 complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal by a transsexual man who was refused membership in a St. Catharines, Ont., women’s only gym. Though the tribunal dismissed the complaint, it represented a costly ordeal for the gym owner.
“To be clear, we’re not saying that individuals who identify as ‘transgendered’ are sexual predators,” Campaign Life said. “Rather, there will be an increased legal opportunity for sexual predators and peeping toms who pretend to be ‘transgendered’ to enter female bathrooms.”
Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) vice president and general legal counsel Don Hutchinson praised the intent of the bill in protecting people from hatred and discrimination but called it “unnecessary” and “inadequate.” He said it would be similar to adding specific religious freedom provisions for Baptists or other individual denominations when religious freedom is already covered.
The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) also opposes the bill, bringing Catholic teaching on the Theology of the Body into the mix.
“Those who propose new rights for the ‘transgendered’ would have us believe that the body lies and that gender is nothing more than an arbitrary social construct,” said COLF assistant director Peter Murphy. “We need to recognize that this claim of the gender ideology merely represents the next logical step for a society that has spent the better part of a century attempting to sever the connection between sex and procreation.”
The body “reveals a truth which cannot be denied except at society’s peril,” said Murphy. The truth comes both from nature and theology, a “reality that finds its highest natural fulfilment in the begetting of a child.”
At the same time, the COLF assistant director urged Catholics to exercise compassion.
“It is impossible to remain unmoved by the intense and very real suffering of those who feel unable to live according to the truth revealed by their bodies,” Murphy said. “But that truth must nevertheless be acknowledged.”
Murphy said society must do all it can to help those suffering from gender confusion to achieve “authentic integration” to be able to identify “with the truth their bodies reveal.”