Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Latest WingNut Meme: Christophobia

Now I start to understand why Harper is trying to trigger an election so hard right now. He needs an election before the wingnut base starts squirming any more visibly.

For reference, I point to this bit of screed from Tristan Emmanuel.

For the most part Emmanuel is criticizing Harper because he hasn't moved to curtail Canada's CHRC. But, there's a few choice little tidbits of note.

Ezra Levant is a very diplomatic and polite man - characteristic of his Canadian upbringing. And from reading his commentary, I think Ezra does sincerely believe and hope that his friends in the Conservative Party of Canada actually do feel very strongly about the issue; that the CHRC is a rogue Gestapo-like agency that needs reining in.


Please note the intentional blurring of lines. The complaint against Ezra Levant had absolutely nothing to do with the Federal CHRC, it was in fact a complaint handled through the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission which is a provincial body. In an earlier post on the subject, a commenter had criticized me for discussing Levant's case in the context of the Federal body, but I believe that this confirms my assertion back then that Levant and his allies were deliberately confusing the issue.

The time for Stephen Harper to have shown "courage" came and went years ago. For example, he could have spoken up when he was the Opposition leader - it might have been politically inexpedient then, but at least we could have called it "courage". He could have shown leadership at that time by coming to the defence of B.C. teacher Chris Kempling who was - and is still being - maliciously persecuted and vilified by his professional association, the B.C. College of Teachers, for writing a letter to the editor in defence of traditional marriage. If Harper had stood up then, it would have been "courage".


I've written about Kempling before, and Emmanuel is simply repeating a talking point that is a gross oversimplification of the situation.

However, it's this little plug for his own book that gets me:

For years I've been writing about the gaping leadership vacuum in Canada's political scene. I even published a book on a related subject called: "Christophobia: The Real Reason Behind Hate Crime Legislation".


It's amazing how the phrase "Christophobia" comes bubbling up from the wingnut-o-sphere, usually whenever a limit on their supposed right to slam and marginalize others whom they deem "sinful" comes to the surface. I don't much like the term "homophobia" either - it fails to describe anything meaningful. I'm not afraid of "christianity", or any other religion - but I don't accept the claim that any faith should have any moral or legal precedence above others in the public arena.

In a nation that does not give prominence to any single religious tradition, the simple reality is that using religion as a club to justify marginalizing others is just wrong. In such a situation, we find that religion becomes largely a personal matter, shared within social contexts, but not used to justify treating someone else as a lesser person before the law - whether it is for what they believe, or their supposed "lifestyle" (which is so often imagined rather than understood).

Equally amusing is the reality that within the broad umbrella of "Christian" are a significant number of branches of the faith that have chosen to be accepting of the very people whom Emmanuel and others condemn so vocally.

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