Posted on 10/03/2009 2:14:26 PM PDT by narses
An Edmonton teacher fired after telling a Catholic school board she was changing her gender to a man says the case fuels an unfair stereotype nationwide that Albertans are rednecks.
"I do believe it may feed into the myth that Albertans are redneck," said Jan Buterman who this week launched an Alberta Human Rights Commission complaint about the firing from a public Catholic school board in St. Albert that came on her birthday last October. "I really don't think it's really what Alberta is," said Buterman.
She's undergoing the process of becoming a man and had been a substitute teacher at the board for six months.
She said she was removed from the substitute teaching list of the Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools board after receiving a letter from a deputy superintendent who wrote, "Since you made a personal choice to change your gender, which is contrary to Catholic teachings, we have had to remove you from the substitute teacher list."
The official said the gender change "would create confusion and complexity with students and parents as a model and witness to Catholic faith values."
Buterman -- who has two children -- said she's essentially a man trapped in a woman's body and has a gender identity disorder.
"I do actually have a real medical condition. I really didn't know this sort of thing could happen anymore," she said of being axed by the board. "It doesn't feel very good. If feels pretty horrifying."
She said laws should protect her against being discriminated over gender or medical conditions.
Buterman said the board's argument that she couldn't be a "model and witness to Catholic faith values" rings hollow because officials also knew she was a Lutheran when first hired and that didn't pose an issue.
"Are they saying if someone was Sikh or Muslim they wouldn't hire them at all?"
Buterman's case is drawing comparisons to that of Delwin Vriend's fight in the 1990s. Vriend was an instructor at Edmonton's King's University College and was fired because of his homosexuality. His attempt to file a complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission failed because legislation at the time didn't protect people on grounds of their sexual orientation.
Vriend's fight wound up in the Supreme Court of Canada that essentially ruled provincial human rights laws must protect people against discrimination over their sexual orientation.
A spokesman for the St. Albert school board could not be reached for comment.
In March, Alberta debuted a $25-million rebranding campaign whose main video stressed Albertans are progressive, "open" thinkers who "embrace diversity."
The right to not be offended in one's homosexuality supersedes the freedom of religion or freedom of speech in the Great White North (eh)
Wonder how God is "feeling"?
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