Kevin Van Paassen, National Post Marc Hall is fighting for the right to take his boyfriend to prom.

TORONTO - A gay student at a Catholic high school has launched a lawsuit against his principal after he was banned from attending the prom with his boyfriend.

Marc Hall, 17, yesterday filed an injunction in the Ontario Superior Court to lift the ban, upheld this week by trustees of the Durham Catholic District School Board. The board is also named in the suit.

"I'm sorry we have to be here. I don't want to be suing my school. I just want to go to the [May 10] prom with my boyfriend," Mr. Hall told a news conference.

Mr. Hall, a Grade 12 student at Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic School in Oshawa, argues in his statement of claim that school administrators violated his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by "discriminating against him on the basis of his sexual orientation and publicly taking the position that they are justified in treating him in a discriminatory fashion, thereby encouraging others to do likewise in other contexts."

He is also seeking $100,000 in damages. George Smitherman, a provincial Liberal MPP who is gay, is acting as litigation guardian because Mr. Hall is under 18.

The controversy has ignited a debate about the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality. It has also raised questions about the right of Catholic officials to uphold Church teachings in a publicly funded school system, even if some view the positions as discriminatory.

According to a board statement, the Church "does not condemn an individual for his or her sexual orientation. However, the behaviours associated with a homosexual lifestyle are not consistent with Church teaching and our values as a Catholic school system."

Ontario is constitutionally required to publicly fund Catholic schools. The board has said it is "constitutionally entitled to administer its schools in a manner that is consistent with the teachers of the Church."

David Corbett, a human rights lawyer who is representing Mr. Hall, said he is not disputing the constitutional protections accorded to the Catholic school system in Ontario. "They have a special status where they receive funding and they are constitutionally recognized. Does that mean, we ask, that their rights are absolute?... We say no."

According to the Ontario Education Act, a code of conduct provides that all school members "respect and treat each other fairly, regardless of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability."

The statement of claim alleges the decisions of the principal and the board target Mr. Hall for being gay. "The special constitutional protection of the Board and the School do not immunize them from Charter scrutiny, or from complying with the fundamental laws of Canada. In particular, the rights and privileges according to Catholic schools in Ontario at the time of Confederation did not include opting out of or ignoring basic standards of civil conduct."

The lawsuit is having an effect at Mr. Hall's school, where some students are challenging what they have been taught.

"They teach us God created people equally, but they say homosexuality is wrong and against God. That's like saying God was making a mistake when He made Marc. That's just not right," 19-year-old Alicia McAuley, a Grade 13 student, said.

The Durham separate school board's decision that homosexual dating will not be allowed at this year's graduation prom has the full support of the area's archdiocese, which says the decision is in accord with Church doctrine.

The school board denied the request of Marc Hall, a 17-year-old student at Oshawa's Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic high school, to go to his prom with John Paul Dumont, 21.

Suzanne Scorsone, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, which includes the school, said taking a date to a prom is "exploration that will lead to a decision about marriage," and thus subject to the Church's unequivocal proscription of homosexuality.

"People have a choice as to whether they attend a Catholic school or not. There are other options available to them, and for people to choose to be practising Catholics ... [is to] acknowledge the rightness of the teachings themselves," she said.

Father Jean-Marc Laporte, a Jesuit priest and professor of theology at the University of Toronto's Regis College, said a gay prom date would have sent the misleading message that Catholic students can be practising homosexuals.

"There would be no behaviour [at the prom] that anyone would be able to take umbrage at, except there would this sense of discomfort, like 'What statement is he making and what social mores are being violated here?' " he said. "In this case, what you have is a person who is trying to make a statement ... that 'I have another set of moral standards than the ones this particular school board is supposed to be involved in.' "

Ms. Scorsone said the controversy surrounding the decision, which was fuelled by the participation of a local union and intense media coverage, raised the spectre of religious intolerance against Catholics.

She said people who side with Mr. Hall are, in effect, urging the school to be inconsistent with Catholic dogma.

"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity," reads the Catholic catechism, the set of doctrines adopted worldwide after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, or Vatican II, in the 1960s. The document makes clear, though, that homosexuality is judged to be "contrary to the natural law."

In Catholic writings, homosexuality is often likened to alcoholism as an unchosen but unnatural state of mind, for which the victim requires pity and treatment rather than accomodation.

Paul Gibson, an Anglican priest who has written on Christianity and homosexuality, has argued that Christianity's traditional proscription of homosexuality is based largely on biblical references to random acts of promiscuity, which were judged immoral. It is a dangerous stretch, he says, to extend this condemnation to the loving commitment many homosexual couples enjoy today.