Canada's Harper government delightfully surprised both its friends and its foes last week. It leaked the fact that it may bring in a "Defense of Religions Act" to protect critics of homosexual practice from prosecution under human rights codes, and to prohibit the firing of marriage commissioners who refuse on the grounds of their religion to "marry" homosexual couples.
Social conservative allies were surprised because opposition to gay marriage, which had begun to seem a lost cause, was being revived. Government foes are equally delighted, because they assume that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has finally made a blunder that will enable them to portray him as surrendering to the "bigots" in his party.
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The move helps "paint the government as intolerant of dissent," declared columnist Don Martin in the National Post. "Same sex marriages are here to stay." (How a law guaranteeing free speech should represent "intolerance of dissent" some may find baffling.)
A better point, however, was raised by columnist John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail. Just why, Ibbitson speculated, is Harper doing this? True, he is committed to "revisiting the issue" of same-sex marriage at this fall's sitting of Parliament – meaning that gay marriage, instituted by the former Liberal government last year by a vote of 158 to 133, will be voted on again by the new Commons. But this was seen as merely a way to shelve the issue, since all sides concede that same-sex marriage is certain to be reaffirmed.
Now, however, it seems that Harper is considering this "Defense of Religions Act," which could easily turn same-sex marriage into an election issue. What is his motive? Ibbitson offers three possible explanations: 1) Harper simply blundered, which is Martin's thesis. 2) Social conservatives in the party forced him into it. 3) "Harper believes the bill could be a political winner."
The betting, says Ibbitson, is on No. 3. "The prime minister may believe there is a large number of voters out there who do not consider themselves intolerant or bigoted, but who do feel that the gay agenda has become relentless and is threatening the traditional freedoms of religion and speech. Such voters would not see a Defense of Religions Act as dangerously homophobic. Instead, they would welcome it as a sensible insurance policy against present and future excesses by zealots of all persuasions."
He concludes: "Anyone who thinks the Conservatives want to put same-sex marriage behind them should think again."
Little mentioned in this media discussion is the role of the Canadian courts, whose conduct on the question of gay rights has been wholly and unreservedly favorable. The Supreme Court of Canada began by taking it upon itself to "read" gay rights into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, though Parliament itself had specifically voted against doing this.
Since then, in British Columbia, a public school teacher has been severely disciplined for writing letters to a newspaper critical of the "gay lifestyle." There was no suggestion he had ever expressed this attitude in his classes, but the mere fact he was a teacher was enough to deny him a right to criticize. In Manitoba, marriage commissioners were ordered to marry gays, whatever their own religious convictions. In Saskatchewan, an advertisement in a newspaper that merely quoted without comment biblical injunctions against homosexuality resulted in a conviction.
This is the conduct the Harper bill would prohibit. But the law itself, if passed, would almost certainly be quashed by the Supreme Court, jam-packed with pro-gays by the former Liberal government. What happens then would depend, of course, on the next election. A Harper majority government would have the power under the Charter, and perhaps the political fortitude as well, to overrule the court.
At a minimum, the defeat of this bill would make same-sex marriage a major election issue and, as Ibbitson notes, there is a deepening public mindset that things like gay rights have gone much too far in Canada. So too have prisoners' rights, animal rights, child rights, divorce rights, etc. – everything except parents' rights, which have been consistently subverted. The conviction grows that the chief target of most of these rights movements is the institution of the family, the mainstay of any society.
An electorate increasingly aware of rampant marital breakup, murder, rape, drugs, street crime, and every manner of sexual perversion and social disintegration may decide that it's time to put a stop to all this. If Harper thinks Canada has reached this point, that would explain the "Defense of Religions Act."
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