Ted Morton's At It Again

How intriguing, Ted Morton's getting into bed with a bunch of "religious leaders" in his campaign to deny legal marriage recognition to gay couples.

Now his tack is to approach it as "damaging to children", and demand that a parliamentary committee be struck to 'study' that allegation. (I caught that on the radio driving home from work tonight - I'll try to find a corroborating print article over the next couple of days - this CP article is a bit more detailed than that off CBC, but not much.)

Personally, I fail to see how a legal same gender marriage has any effect on children of other couples. (It's not like there aren't gay couples around already, is it?)

However, the impact this will have on the Alberta PC party could be quite interesting. With Morton courting the religious conservative vote so openly, he stands to split the party along factional lines. We've already seen some early signs of divisions within the PC party as the leadership campaign went through the early months, and it strikes me that Morton could well serve as a polarizing force that ultimately splits the party.

This may well be what he wants to achieve. Morton has always been almost an "Alberta Nationalist" in his rhetoric, and his legislative behaviour more recently has demonstrated that he would be quite happy to take Alberta out of Canada. If he can do it and create his own little version of Gilead, he'd probably be quite happy.