The principal of Lebanon’s Jounieh Central School, which serves the Maronite community, and several teachers were summoned to court this month (March 2024) for a hearing on a document titled “All types of families.” The document that was distributed to students also showed families with parents of the same gender. According to the hearing summons, the text encourages sexual deviance, which goes against moral, educational, and natural law norms. The school administration swiftly initiated an investigation into the incident.
After all of the commotion, it became clear that the document’s purpose was to present the topic of orphanhood. The teacher used the paper to demonstrate to the children that members of an extended family could care for an orphan. Despite this, the presidency of the Lebanese Maronite Order ruled that the teacher and coordinator be suspended for one month since their actions, even if unintentional, exhibited functional negligence and tarnished the school’s reputation.
The Gay Pride Parade was first held in Lebanon in 2017, and it quickly became a pioneering and unique Arab event. However, the LGBT issue is still not commonly acknowledged in Lebanon. Any attempt to normalize the situation, even unwittingly, has been thwarted and aggressively fought. And that’s before we get into Hezbollah’s position on the issue.
