As we head toward the Easter weekend and Passover, I would like to take as minute to stand up for faith in Canada.

After living outside my native land for a number of years it was distressing to realize upon my return that there is a lot of religious bigotry here.

The latest example is a fight going on in Ontario over what should be an issue of no disagreement.

The stated goal is combating bullying in school. Who is for it? Only the bullies, I would assume.

Ontario has two anti-bullying laws being debated.

The Liberal bill singles out the problem of gay bullying more than the Conservative one, which talks about all forms of it.

Gay rights activists want to force Catholic schools to form Gay Straight Alliances as opposed to anti-bullying groups or clubs or safe zones, while some Catholic parents complain gay activists are trying to hijack the education of their children.

I have spoken to concerned parents in the Catholic school system. They welcome an anti-bullying program and they do not want gay kids to be bullied.

But they themselves are being bullied by gay activists who seem more inclined to want to bully the Catholics than they are in actually combating all other forms of bullying.

To claim, as these activists are doing, that bullying is only an issue for gay kids is one more savage attack on the fat kid, the homely girl and the immigrant kid who struggles to learn the language and comes to school in funny clothing.

What does the fat kid say at the Gay Straight Alliance meeting? What do they say to him? Oh, I know. Nothing, because he is unlikely to go to the meeting, as it isn’t about his bothersome problems.

Stupid fat kid – don’t you know gays have real problems?

As the Toronto Sun editorialized, “All this is so far removed from the problem of bullying that it’s time for a reality check.”

The way to fight bullying is to have school boards, bureaucrats, principals and teachers committed to ending it.

It’s to make it clear to kids from the first day of school that no one has the right to bully them for any reason and that if they are being bullied, the adults in charge of the school will help them.

Then, that promise has to be backed up with real action.

The Sun wrote, “None of this will happen as long as we’re caught in an ideologically-driven sideshow over one form of bullying based on sexual orientation. Bullying kids because they’re gay is unacceptable. So is bullying them for any other reason.”

I can think of only one reason for anyone to make the issue about the Catholics and not about bullying.

Religious bigotry and, yes, there is a gay agenda.

I don’t think it represents all gay people, possibly not most gay people.

But it is there, and it is definitely anti-faith in general and in Ontario, anti-Catholic in particular.