Experience with many countries has convinced me that we should be very careful about limiting the autonomy of non–public schools-and, indeed, of public schools, but that is another discussion-to preserve and express distinctive visions of the nature of a flourishing human life and how to promote it in children.Įducational freedom, both the freedom to provide education and the freedom to choose a school for one’s children, is protected as a basic human right by several international covenants, as well as by decisions of the US Supreme Court. I am also vice president of the Geneva-based NGO OIDEL, which promotes educational freedom around the world. Currently, I serve on the state advisory committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. After serving more than 20 years as the Massachusetts official responsible for enforcing the law against discrimination in schools, I became a professor at Boston University and was the University’s representative on the Governor’s Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth.
While I understand this instinctive reaction, I’d like to point out the implications of limiting the freedom of non–public schools to choose whom to employ. Predictably, the tone of both accounts, and the great majority of those quoted, were sympathetic toward the victims of these decisions. Just a week later, the front page of the Boston Globe featured a story about a Massachusetts Catholic school that canceled its job offer to a prospective food services director when it learned that he was in a same-sex marriage.
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