The Marc Hall Prom Predicament: Queer Individual Rights v. Institutional Church Rights in Canadian Public Education

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Wells, Kristopher
  • Grace, Andre P.

• In 2002 Marc Hall’s principal denied him permission to take his boyfriend to his Catholic high‐school prom. In examining the politicization of the ensuing prom predicament, we critique Catholicized education and what we perceive to be the Catholic Church’s efforts to privatize queerness as it segregates being religious from being sexual. We situate this privatization as the failure of the Catholic Church to treat vulnerable queer Catholic youth with dignity and integrity as the church sets untenable limits to queer. Examining Canadian case law regarding individual rights, we argue for the importance of upholding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the name of democratic principles.

• Date created

  2005

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Catholic Church
  • Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
  • Court judgments
  • Individual rights
  • Supreme Court of Canada
  • Institutional church rights
  • Queer youth

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R39P2WH37

• License

  © 2005 Kristopher Wells. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.