Fighting for Catholic School Gay-Straight Alliances: Youth Influencing Education Policy in Ontario, Canada

• In Event: 79.050 - MTCC Roundtable Session 36
  In Roundtable Session: 79.050-3 - Policy, Praxis, and the Education Rights of LGBTQIA Students

Abstract

When politicians and policy makers develop policies that are not in the best interests of young people, teenagers increasingly mobilize, organize, and intervene to contest these unjust policies and practices that negatively affect them. This research is a case study of student activism that led to protections for gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in the Canadian province of Ontario’s Education Act. The authors situate this activism both within the specific context of Ontario’s publicly-funded Catholic school system and the broader political context of concern over the bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) youth and their subsequent suicides. The authors demonstrate how these juveniles worked in defiance of their schools to effectively influence education policy in pursuit of social justice.

Authors

• Lee Iskander, The University of British Columbia

• Tonya D. Callaghan, University of Calgary

• Abigail Shabtay, McGill University

• Brent Franco Saccucci, University of Toronto