Alberta’s Bill 2 would have Dante’s Divine Comedy banned too!

A diversity clause in section 16 of the Education Act of Alberta has many Alberta parents worried that the dreaded human rights commissions will crush their ability to provide their children with better content and greater values than those offered in the cookie-cutter, government-dictated curriculum.

Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk seems to think that homeschooling parents are against human rights in opposing the bill, which misses the point.  The point is that a diversity code policed by the Human Rights Commission would clash with and ravage an enriched curriculum of education.

Here is a real-life European example of precisely how it will likely happen.

According to Gherush 92, an European human rights organization that acts as a consultant to UN bodies on racism and discrimination, Dante’s Divine Comedy should be removed from schools and universities on account that the Medieval masterpiece is “racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic.”

You read that right.  Even for university students!  Dante’s Divine Comedy is one of the greatest works of western civilization.

Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president.

Given that the Alberta legislation marshaled by Lukaszuk places the matter of “variety” to be enforced by the Alberta Human Rights Commission –which has an appalling record in violating religious rights, abridging freedom of the press and violating fundamental legal freedoms of citizens instead of protecting them (just ask Ezra Levant), Gherush 92’s recommendation is likely where Albertans will soon be unless the Redford government changes the legislation.

All that needs to happen for the Human Rights Commission to act is for someone to complain that homeschoolers at 111 Main Street are reading Dante and that it hurts or offends the feelings of the complainant.

Minister Lukaszuk may be truthful when he says he doesn’t want anything like this to happen here, but the reality is that Bill2 paves the way for it, whether or not the minister sees it.

Full disclosure: Our children are being homeschooled in Alberta, and the two teens in the household recently finished reading Dante’s “Inferno,” a portion of the “Divine Comedy.”