Finally, someone who actually realizes that it's about the benefit to all, not about the benefit to self; someone who realizes that to accept the money and keep silent is to strip all legitimacy from the allegations, to take all power from the argument that we are people too, and need to be treated as such. I wish him all the best, and hope that the road ahead will be easier for him.
By Allison Salz QMI Agency
EDMONTON - A man fired by the St. Albert Catholic School District over a sex change operation says accepting a cash settlement in exchange for silence would only further discrimination. "I won't be silenced forever," said Jan Buterman. Buterman says he turned down a settlement offer because it would require him to keep quiet and drop a human rights complaint. He says he was removed from the substitution list in 2008 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." He says the publicly funded school district can't buy his silence with an offer of $78,000 cash or a one-year teaching job. "They added into it that they wanted me to remain silent about the fact that this had ever happened," he says. "I wasn't OK with that. I would have rather just worked for that money." David Keohane, superintendent of the Catholic school district, said the board has been working with the human rights commission to try to ensure the offer is seen as fair and reasonable. Buterman anticipates the Catholic school board will ask the Alberta Human Rights Commission to dismiss his complaint. The commission has the right not to send a case to hearing if a "fair and reasonable settlement" is offered. "If it's dismissed, then that's the end of the struggle," he said. "But it's not the end of finding ways to develop a voice." Pushing the issue into the public arena is a good thing, says Kristopher Wells, a researcher at the University of Alberta. "A case as complex as this could end up in front of the Supreme Court of Canada," he says. Wells has long been an advocate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. He says all too often people are paid to keep quiet, which only perpetuates the problem. "The same kind of behaviour gets repeated over and over again," he says. "There is no precedent, there is no knowledge," Buterman agrees and says this isn't just about him, it's about all transgender people. "We need concrete examples of things like this that happened," he says. "Erasing them historically affects situations in the future." This isn't the first time a school board has been accused of discriminating against a transgender person. In 1988, Carol Allan was forced out of her classroom after she told the Edmonton public school board she was making the transition from a man to a woman. Allan was eventually given a job teaching adults. She was eventually allowed back into the elementary classroom. She retired after 31 years as a teacher.
allison.salz@sunmedia.ca
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