Annual Report
of the President of Dignity Canada Dignité
President’s 2019-2020 Report to
the Dignity Canada Dignité House of Delegates Meeting
First, I’d like to welcome everyone to our first House of
Delegates meeting taking place online. I hope that we’re still able to share our
experiences and have productive dialogue about our organization and how to be
helpful to our members and all LGBTQ persons in Canada and in other countries
too. There are four items during the past 12 months that I’d like to bring to
your attention:
1.
Dignity
Network Canada/Réseau
Dignité Canada
This past year, Dignity
Canada Dignité became a member of the Dignity Network which was officially
incorporated in January 24, 2020. It
is a group of civil society
organizations across Canada involved in supporting the human rights of people
regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex
characteristics (SOGIESC) globally. Its vision is a world where LGBTQ people
everywhere enjoy full human rights and socio-economic well-being. It is governed
by a Board of Directors and has a number of working groups to advance its
collective work.
The Network is
intended to be a Canadian hub for communication and knowledge-sharing across organizations on global LGBTQ and SOGIESC human rights issues, especially
emphasizing the perspectives of international partners.
Present working groups
are the following, as determined by interest of participating members:
ˇ
Communications and Public Awareness
ˇ
Advocacy
and Government Relations
ˇ
Learning
and Community of Practice
Background: In
February 2019, the federal government announced $30 million in dedicated funding
over five years, followed by $10 million per year to advance human rights and
improve socio-economic outcomes for LGBTQ people in developing countries. This
new investment is intended to support Canadian LGBTQ and intersex organizations
in their efforts to collaborate with partners in developing countries. It will
also serve to support local and regional organizations and equality movements in
developing countries, as well as partnerships and multilateral initiatives that
contribute to policy, advocacy and research efforts in this area.
2.
Assistance to a Canadian
Author
Dignity Canada Dignité
and Dignity USA received an email requesting our assistance to help a Canadian
author of gay romance novels have his novels carried by a large German
bookseller and publisher.
The bookseller had
been selling the German translation of his novel(s) for more than a year but
then discontinued sales around 2012, saying it could not support LGBTQ
materials. At that time, the bookstore was owned by a Catholic diocese in
Germany. The media became aware of the bookstore’s actions and also was aware
that it was selling soft-core heterosexual porn. A boycott ensued and even the
German ambassador to Canada contacted the Canadian publishing house offering
assistance. The bookstore eventually went bankrupt, and the company is now under
new ownership.
The author was seeking
our support to encourage the bookseller to include print copies of the recent
German translation of a new novel in every one of its locations in Germany,
Switzerland and Austria. Partially out of curiosity, one executive member took
the opportunity to read the novel. Attached to this report is the letter I sent
to the bookstore’s new owner.
3.
“LGBTQ-Free Zone”
Communities in Poland
For many months now,
LGBTQ persons in Poland have been demonized by the Law and Justice Party. It
made opposition to LGBTQ equality a centrepiece of its campaign in the recent
summer election. The re-election of the country’s President Andrzej Duda was
backed by this party. While it is disappointing that he was re-elected, on the
positive side, in the runoff vote that took place on July 12th, he
received 51% of the vote, while the alternative candidate, the Mayor of Warsaw,
who supports equal rights for LGBTQ persons received 49%. The Party and Duda
tried to instill fear and hatred of LGBTQ citizens among voters by promoting
hateful rhetoric filled with lies.
Why this matter is
especially relevant to Dignity Canada Dignité and our sister organizations and
why it demands our considered response is that prominent Polish bishops have
repeated and perhaps even lead the hateful rhetoric in a very public way. And
93% of Poles are baptised Catholics. Among other things, one of more bishops
have publicly proclaimed that:
ˇ
we are
child abusers.
ˇ
placing
a rainbow flag around a statue of Jesus is desecration.
ˇ
Poland
is under siege from a rainbow plague of gay rights campaigners.
ˇ
“… the most serious threat to humanity is not infectious diseases
or hunger, or even ecological catastrophes, but precisely the gender ideology,
which is a new variant of Marxism…which strikes at marriage and family, reducing
people to the level of degenerate beings, unable to transmit further life.”
(Bishop I. Dec)
ˇ
Criticism of bishops’ pronouncements is a form of persecution as Jesus was
persecuted for refusing to “submit to political correctness” (i.e., the bishops
are the victims for speaking out.)
Polish bishops who
have made public remarks have been supported by other Polish bishops, as well as
church leaders in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
On August 28th
the Polish Bishops’ Conference released a position paper on LGBTQ+ issues. Among
other things, it asserts that the Catholic teaching about the immorality of
homosexual behaviour is universal, unchanging and infallible, based on the
Bible, tradition and natural law (but is silent of the role of lived experiences
of Church members.) The document also notes that “it is necessary to create a
counselling centre (also with the help of the Church or with its structures) to
help people who wish to regain their sexual health and natural sexual
orientation…” (para. 38) New Ways Ministry in the USA noted that the document
relies heavily on the paper Male and
Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender
Theory in Catholic Education
released by the Vatican
Congregation for Catholic Education in June 2019. As a general comment, the
bishops are often repeating the worst of the institution’s teachings on
sexuality, sexual ethics and our civil rights that can be found in Vatican
documents published in 1986, 1992, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2016 and 2019 as Mark and
Eugene outlined in Dignity Canada Dignité’s paper “Cultivating Justice Love:
Toward a Revision of Catholic Sexual Ethics” (s. 14) released February 11, 2019.
As a response to the
Polish Catholic Church’s homophobic actions, I decided to send emails to each
bishop, individually, and in my name alone. I assumed that correspondence on a
controversial topic sent by an individual from a foreign country was more likely
to be read than something sent on behalf of a foreign organization. It’s
difficult to know what strategy might be more effective. In addition, on my
behalf our secretary sent an email to all on our Dignity list in which I
described the challenges faced by LGBTQ persons in Poland and encouraging those
on the list to also write one or more Polish bishops. We provided several links
to information sources on the problem (including a link to the open letter sent
to the bishops by the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics), my correspondence as
an example, and a small database of contact information for all bishops.
4.
Global Network of Rainbow
Catholics
In the spring 2020 we
applied to become a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics (GNRC).
It’s still pending (actually, it got lost until a month ago.) I’ve become
active on its Contemplative Spiritual Formation committee which meets on Zoom
every second Friday. Among the coordinators, by chance there’s one person from
the World Community of Christian Meditation (chaplain/leaders are Laurence
Freeman and John Main), one from Thomas Keating’s Centering Prayer school, and
I’m familiar with Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation.
Dignity Canada Dignité is Canada's
organization of Roman Catholics who are concerned about our
church's sexual theology, particularly as it pertains to
gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons. We work in
collaboration with other Catholic organizations seeking
reform in our church's leadership and teachings. |
Frank
Testin
president@dignitycanada.org
October, 2020
|