In a letter addressed to the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, he and three other lawyers, including a professor of law at the University of Ottawa, are asking the federation to block the accreditation of a Christian law school at British Columbia’s Trinity Western University (TWU), claiming the school’s policies discriminate against homosexuality.
“It is just wrong to have a law school approve discrimination in its own structure,” Ruby said Friday. “That kind of discrimination, which denies some people the right to equality, is fundamentally inconsistent with law and democracy.”
TWU requires students to sign the Community In Covenant, a contract requiring students to accept “the Bible as the divinely inspired, authoritative guide for personal and community life.” Included in that would be to abstain from same-sex intimacy. Violators to the contract risk discipline, including expulsion.
In 2012, the school applied for accreditation to make it the first Christian law school in Canada. Ruby argues that TWU policy that blocks homosexuality in its halls is discriminatory.
“This alone makes it incompetent to deliver legal education in the public interest,” Ruby wrote in the letter dated Feb. 28.
The federation would not comment on the school’s application, citing confidentiality.
In late January, deans from law schools across the country wrote a similar letter opposing the school.
“In our view, this is a covenant that clearly contemplates discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” Bill Flanagan, president of the Canadian Council of Law Deans and Dean of Law at Queen’s University, said in January.
In response, Flanagan said the federation said it doesn’t have the jurisdiction to consider who gets into the program, and can only examine the program itself.
TWU has been down this road before. In 2001, the British Columbia College of Teachers refused to accredit TWU because it felt such accreditation would violate its own discrimination policy. The case went to the Supreme Court of Canada.
“The court said that what they’re doing is discrimination against the human rights code of B.C., in that case,” Ruby said. Because of a religious exemption in B.C. law, the school was accredited.
Janet Epp Buckingham, an associate professor TWU, interprets the decision in a different way.
“I would argue what the court said was that TWU, as a Christian university, had the right to have Christian principles as a foundation for the university,” Epp Buckingham said. She said she would see no conflict in Canadian law with Christian values, even as a barrier to taking law at TWU.
“We do not exclude gays and lesbians from our campus; we are not violating Canadian law,” Epp Buckingham said.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Jeff Green
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