Schools, parents launch legal challenge against Alberta’s gay-straight alliance legislation

Apr 10, 2018 by Jill

by Jonathon Van Maren, LifeSite:

Nothing irritates a progressive like discovering that people disagree with him—and nothing highlights that fact more beautifully than the response of Alberta’s education minister David Eggen to the news that his attempt to place the state in between parents and children was being challenged in court.

Eggen spearheaded Bill 24 late last year, making it illegal for a school to tell parents if their child decided to join a Gay-Straight Alliance Club (GSA). Premier Rachel Notley even said that for parents to be told what their children were up to while in the care of government employees would be “super-cruel,” insinuating that children needed to be protected from Albertan parents.

But on April 5, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) filed a court challenge to the law, with JCCF’s president John Carpay indicating that about 26 religious schools—including Jewish, Sikh, and Christian institutions–have joined the challenge, in addition to other citizens who are simply concerned about the threat this legislation poses to parental rights.

Fundamentally, Carpay noted, this bill implies that the state cares more for children than parents do, and believes that secrets should be kept from parents as a result. David Eggen, who has been relentlessly attacking faith-based schools since the beginning of his tenure, promptly threw a tantrum. In an email to Discover Airdrie, he detailed his frustration:

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