Sex change teacher as equal as anyone

By Naomi Lakritz, Calgary Herald

Here we go again. You’d think in this day and age, in Alberta, that people should no longer have to fear losing their jobs because of who they are. Have we not reached some more enlightened state since the Delwin Vriend case ended with the 1998 Supreme Court decision that ordered Alberta to read in sexual orientation to its human rights law? Apparently not, because Jan Buterman, 39, a substitute teacher with the Greater St. Albert Catholic School Board, has lost his job for being transgendered.

This is as disgraceful as the Vriend firing. Ironically, Buterman, who was fired a year ago, lodged his complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission on Oct. 1, the very day that sexual orientation was officially added to this province’s human rights legislation. For the non-crime of being gay, Vriend was fired in 1991 from his lab instructor position at King’s University College, a private Christian college in Edmonton. Like Vriend, the only thing Buterman is guilty of is wanting to live authentically and be true to himself. That is something everybody aspires to do. More power to him for achieving it.

The school board’s letter to Buterman lauds his teaching skills, but states that his changing from a woman to a man doesn’t match Catholic teachings and values, and is confusing for parents and students.

“I dress the same, I look the same, I talk the same. There’s really been very little difference,” Buterman said Tuesday in a telephone interview. All he really wanted to do was alert his employer that he wanted to be called Mr. Buterman. Nor was he anticipating that the school board would react the way it did. He was a little apprehensive, but not because he thought he might lose his job: “It was more of the sense in the community of other transgendered people, in some work situations there’s a fair bit of preparation they have to do with this stuff. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe (the board) would want to think about how to discuss that with their people. Something like cancer has a higher prevalence among staff members than being transsexed. I thought there’d be some discussion, but not this particular one. It kind of blindsided me.”

The school board is right that Buterman’s situation is confusing–but not in the way they define confusion. The students and parents must be very confused to discover that the Catholic teachings of love for one’s fellow human being, and Catholic values based on the teachings of Jesus, who unfailingly sided with society’s marginalized, are not unconditional, as they may have been led to believe. How very confusing to discern that there is a veneer of hypocrisy, like a thin film of grime, covering the values you were brought up to believe were immutable. How very confusing for them too, to know that two other school boards–St. Albert Protestant Separate and Sturgeon School Division– have had no problem with keeping Buterman’s name on their lists of active substitute teachers after his sex change.

Kim Lynch-Staunton, communications co-ordinator for the Greater St. Albert Catholic School Board told me Tuesday: “It is a personnel matter. The board will not be commenting at this time.”

It’s so much more than a personnel matter. It’s a human rights matter. It’s a matter of one man’s dignity, and the respect he is owed by his employer. Buterman wants his job back. He loves teaching and he enjoys working with junior and senior high school kids. Nothing in his professional conduct warranted him being fired. And he wonders if what happened to him is illustrative of “the dangers when something is read into (human rights legislation) rather than being written in.”

Buterman says his first reaction to being fired was one of horror. “My horror was really more on the level of (the idea) that a person cannot change their gender. Well, I’m changing my gender, so I suppose I’m not a person then. That’s not a nice set of thoughts that there may be people out there who do not recognize your humanity.”

How very sad that someone should be made to feel dehumanized for having what doctors have diagnosed as a medical condition– and one just as valid as the breast cancer whose effects Buterman has spent “much of this decade” battling.

In a March 2008 interview with the Edmonton Journal from his new home in Paris, France, Delwin Vriend said: “Protecting everyone in society actually protects society itself.”

All the St. Albert students have learned from this current ugly scenario is that if someone is different from you, you can treat him as less worthy by discriminating against him and depriving him of his job. Isn’t it so much better to teach those students a lesson in acceptance that will enable them as adults to continue protecting society in just the way Vriend described?