Thread by @According2Luke

Today I took exception to the way Scheer used his faith & "values" & injected them into a soundbite about the UCP & equality.
I share this story to illustrate my issue when I hear "Christian values".
Because it isn't about the "Values"
@charlesadler @ryanjespersen @KristinRaworth

It isn't really about the values. It's about the beliefs & the tribe of being a fellow believer.
Let me tell you a story. It's part of the story that caused me to become a secular activist (or an anti-unfair religious privilege activist) or whatever it is I am today.

When my wife & chose a school for our daughter we intentionally looked for a non-religious school. We aren't a religious family & wanted to teach our kids about religion at home.
So we selected a non-religious Public school.

Two years of awesome pre-K & K went by until the day my wife came home after dropping our girl off for the first day of grade one.
"You're not going to believe it" she said. "They stop the WHOLE school & play The Lord's Prayer over the loudspeaker and EVERYBODY says it."
What?

Nobody had mentioned this to us. You'd think someone would have said something. Maybe there should have been a consent form to fill in? (There should have been. The school broke the law in not informing us or gaining consent).

So here we were. A non-religious family that didn't want their child subjected to saying or listening or participating in repeating the same prayer every morning, 200 times a year for the next few years.

The turning point came after my daughter came to me professing a belief in God & that she had prayed for something & it had come true. So we asked for our daughter to be exempt from saying the prayer every morning.
The school refused. Yes.

Our public school refused to exempt our daughter from attending prayer every day.
In Canada. In 2010.
The issue was the PA system. It only had one zone. They couldn't put our child in an area with no PA because of health & safety. But the PA only had one zone - Everywhere.

Again we thought about the situation for some time. Then we discovered we were not the first family to ask for their child to be exempt that had been turned down.
So we asked again. The school knew that what they were doing was illegal, but actually didn't care.

They cared more about placating their religious families than they did the law. They cared more about continuing to privilege the will of the religious than actually meeting the Freedom FROM Religion Charter Rights of the non-religious.

We were concerned. Such is dangerous nature of religion that we knew if we spoke up for our FUNDAMENTAL CANADIAN CHARTER RIGHTS we risked a backlash.
A Canadian family being denied Charter Rights, but afraid because of religion & religious persecution - in public school in 2010.

And we were right to be afraid.
When we discovered we weren't the first family to ask for their child to be exempt & then denied we finally said that the status quo wasn't good enough - a solution was going to need to be found.

Given that the school already had a LOGOS Christian religion program that the most religious students attended, we suggested 30 seconds of silence each morning for each student to pray, honour or invest as each saw fit.

The school agreed that this was the best way forward and sent home a communication that in the new school year this would be the practise going forward.
The Christian parents erupted.

Praying during their religion class 3 days a week & having a moment of silence to pray 5 mornings a week wasn't good enough. And so they lobbied the school leadership & leadership relented.

The school Principal asked me if I would attend the school council meeting to explain to the other parents our perspective on the prayer issue (as well as explain some of the legal & rights issues). Little did I realise I was being thrown to the wolves.

When I walked into the school council meeting that night there were around 50 parents there. I think the school only had 350 kids - so this was a record for attendance.
It was NASTY. I'm mean I was STUNNED by how nasty it was...

The atmosphere was about as threatening & toxic as you can imagine. I was truly taken aback by how nasty & threatening the whole experience was.
But it was in this moment I learned what "Christian Values" really means.

You see, reason all these parents wanted the Lord's Prayer every morning was because "this is where we get our values from".
This is why shared moment of reflection wasn't acceptable. This is why school mantra wasn't acceptable. Lord's Prayer is where they got their vales from.

So I asked.
"What values is it that you have that I do not have?"
Never has a room full of 50 people been quieter.
Nothing.
I asked again.
"What values do you have that I do not have?"
Again. Uncomfortable silence.

Someone started scrabbling around "faith" & "belief". And then someone else joined in about "Jesus" & "God". 
And that's when I realised. What many Christians say is important is their "values" - but it isn't. It's belief. It's simply that you have to believe in their god too.

That room of 50 Christians claimed the reason they wanted to keep (continue to force upon everyone) the Lord's Prayer was because of their "values". But they couldn't name a single damn value they had that I didn't.

Because it isn't about "values". It's about dominance for their group. It's about primacy of their faith. It's about resisting change. It's about maintaining privilege.
But the absolute last thing it's about is "values".

I used to pull into the carpark, often just a few minutes late & run into the school with my little girl. We get to the corridor on the way to class when the Lord's Prayer would start playing. Everyone would stop wherever they were, bow their head & start mumbling. It was weird.

I made the mistake of continuing to walk once. The looks I got made it clear that wasn't an option. It always reminded of the original Stepford Wives movie. Just very robotic & surreal.
Then I remembered the other car in the car park.

Every morning I was late & rushing in there would be same car parked in the same spot with the mom & children sat in the car. Waiting.
Because when you are religious but not Christian, you have to wait outside your public school until the prayers of the majority faith are done.

I got a Thank You from that family for my work on the Lord's Prayer issue. I asked them to assist publicly. They declined. And I don't blame them. As a visible minority I can't imagine the price they would have paid.

My children started being shunned. Stopped being invited to birthday parties. We were getting shunned. Ignored. Not spoken to. Backs turned. Uninvited. And my wife was even bullied. I came home one day & found her crying in the minivan in our driveway.

She'd attended Thanksgiving only to be bullied by a bunch of the "Christian" moms and told that she shouldn't have come because "Thanksgiving" was a religious celebration. Those are the real "values".

That school is Sturgeon Heights in St. Albert. They stopped playing the prayer over the PA & started segregating kids into Christian prayers & non-Christian prayers every morning. In a public school. In Alberta. In 2010.

Because that was the best solution for the kids. Not a shared moment of reflection. Not an inclusive school mantra. They still had Xtian religion class 3 days a week in which to pray. Or could have prayed during breaks or lunch.

But no. The Values of those parents demanded we segregate children from their friends every morning so the dominant faith could publicly demonstrate its dominance over and at the exclusion of all others.

Because nothing says "respectful, safe, caring & inclusive" like segregating young children every morning so that you can privilege the dominant faith over & at the exclusion of all others in your communities public school...

It's NOT about the VALUES. It never was.

Scheer didn't have to invoke his God into his belief about equality. He could just have been into equality.
He did it because it's a dogwhistle. They pretend it's about "values", but it isn't really.
It's just about being in the same dominant privilege club.
/fin

I guess I could have saved myself a hundred tweets about why Scheer choose to namedrop God by simply asking,
"Who feels the need to explain why they believe in equality?"

I should also note that I made a rather embarrassing mistake in the very first tweet!
Scheer is leader of the federal conservatives, not the provincial conservatives in Alberta - which is the UCP I accidentally named!
@Twitter- when's <EDIT> coming? ;)