So Much For Ignoring This Story...

I've been trying to leave the story of MP Tom Lukiwski's amazingly vile comments alone, but two events this morning made me change my mind. First was the MPs apology, and PMSH's defense of his MP, the second was driving into work and being subjected to a couple of audio clips from the tape.

My initial reaction was "oh yeah, another raving bigot in the Stephen Harper Party caucus - what else is news?". It's not like there aren't enough of them already sitting in Harper's cabinet.

However, when I started to line up his comments of seventeen years ago with his apology, I got angry.

"If I could take those comments back, I would," the Conservative MP for Regina Lumsden-Lake Centre said. "I would give anything to take those comments back. They do not reflect the type of person that I am. I can only say that on behalf of myself, my family and my children, I am sorry. I am ashamed."

He sounds sorry enough, but for what? He's sorry he made those comments - why? Is he sorry because they have just made him a political liability? Or has he actually changed his views about GLBT people? He claims that his views have changed:

“I have no prejudice against gay people whatsoever. Those comments do not reflect the type of person I am.”

However, actions speak louder than words. What we don't know is what led Lukiwski to a supposed change in his views. I don't doubt that people's views can change as a result of time and experiences. However, this is a fairly dramatic shift in his supposed positions, and we don't have any insight into how Lukiwski arrived at such a dramatic shift in attitudes. The implication could well be that this is no more than prevarications of a man trying to save his political career.

He may have "grown past those beliefs" in the intervening years, but simply making that declaration is a pretty flimsy defense in the face of the ugliness that the video shows us. Actions will speak louder than words, and Lukiwski will need to make amends beyond a mere apology to convince me that his change of heart is genuine. The call to outlaw homosexuality made is a serious concern - criminalizing people is not something that should be done lightly.

In the meantime, the video itself tells us a great deal about the factions within the Stephen Harper Party - and just how ugly it really is. The history of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party is one that is troubling to human rights and civil rights advocates across Canada, and we should not lose sight of the past history of those who seek power today.

Afghanistan - Our Objectives and Reasons For Being There

A commenter back here raises some interesting questions around Canada's involvement in Afghanistan that I think deserve some further consideration.

First off, ostensibly, Canada has been involved in the Afghanistan mission since early 2002, when the Americans invaded the country on the pretext of hunting down Osama bin Laden and other people who were supposedly the brains behind 9/11. This status does put Canada into the somewhat awkward position of having been part of the destruction of the country's government, and therefore having some moral obligation to participate in its restoration to a civil society. From a very "westernized" perspective, that's actually quite true, and it is one of the aspects of the Afghanistan situation that makes it quite different from the neighboring conflict in Iraq.

I will point out that the original mission objectives in Afghanistan have NEVER been fulfilled. Bin Laden remains at large and his whereabouts no better known now than in 2002. There has been little, if any, serious attempt to capture bin Laden - likely because having a bogeyman running about on the loose is very much to the political advantage of fear-mongering warhawks who need a convenient target to focus our attentions on.

Proponents of the mission speak of "bringing democracy" to the country, and of "guaranteeing the rights and freedoms of women and children", which the Taliban government unquestionably trampled all over with great abandon. These are noble objectives, and certainly worthy reasons for our involvement.

While I am all in favour of trying to encourage nations to be more democratic, and to be champions of civil rights for all citizens, I feel it is deeply naive of us to think that we can "export" democracy to foreign powers with any great ease. Democracy itself is a form of government with its roots deeply embedded in a series of social constructs and assumptions that took Western European societies centuries to derive, much less implement. Vast societal change must take place before the notion of democracy has any chance whatsoever to flourish. We would be committing not just ourselves, but the next four or five generations of Canadians to an ongoing presence in Afghanistan if we attempt to claim such a lofty objective.

Similarly, notions of gender equality and roles change not in a short few years, but over decades and centuries. It was only in the early part of the 20th Century that western democratic societies agreed that women were persons, and should be active participants in our government. Legal constructs guaranteeing a woman's equality in legal matters are even more recent in law. It requires a special kind of naivete to believe that we are likely to substantially influence the social constructs relating to gender in a part of the world that has historically been amazingly successful at resisting the effects of invasion and occupation could have - not over mere years, but literally centuries.

"But, what about the Taliban?" those who support the occupation in Afghanistan say. Well, what about the Taliban? They are a political force in the region, and likely in a number of ways that we have yet to fully appreciate. While their particular ethos is deeply troubling to many western people, we should be cautious about condemning them too harshly. They may be extremists, but they are also a reflection of the past and present of the region. Their very existence tells us a great deal about the degree that society would have to change before what we in Canada know as "civil society" would be meaningful in that nation. The Taliban's presence as the power behind a government occurred not out of the rise of malice in the country, but they were in a position to take advantage of the situation when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

Often, the scenario is postulated that the Taliban would "rise from the grave" to take over in Afghanistan after a NATO withdrawal if we haven't "stabilized the country". While that is certainly a possibility, we should not lose sight of the reality that unlike NATO troops which are considerably "apart" from the people who live there every day (and thus the troops are seen as "interlopers" by many), the Taliban and its supporters are part of the local fabric of life. They live in the region, grew up there and know how to play the key power players of the region to their advantage. They will stir things up just enough to make it clear that at any given time "progress" is going to be disrupted. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to bring to heel an adversary that is simply part of the landscape.

While I agree that Canada has a certain degree of obligation to ensuring that Afghanistan is restored to its people in an orderly fashion, we have to also be realistic about what we will (or will not) be able to accomplish in the country. Unlike post WWII Germany, we cannot claim any significant shared cultural heritage between our two nations, and that makes it all the more difficult for us to bring the kind of civil society to Afghanistan that we would desire. We have an obligation to bring a degree of stability to the picture, but then, so does Russia, whose occupation of the 1980s sowed the seeds for the Taliban to sprout from in the first place.

Canada, however, does not have an obligation to bankrupt itself in doing so.

It's Been A Decade...

Since The Supreme Court ruled in Vriend v. Alberta.

To this day, the Alberta government has failed to explicitly amend its human rights legislation, instead obliging the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to leave the following proviso posted on their website:

Although it is not expressly stated in the Act, as of April 2, 1998, sexual orientation is "read in" to the Act by the Supreme Court of Canada as a protected ground of discrimination in Alberta.

The Stelmach government's response is characteristically vague:

Alberta's culture minister says language explicitly protecting gay rights will be looked at as part of a review of the human rights laws.

Uh-huh. I can just imagine how swimmingly that's going to go. You're going to hand one of the most publicly volatile legislative topics to the most inexperienced minister in cabinet? Unless I miss my guess that leaves Minister of Culture Blackett very subject to the influences of such people as Ted Morton (whose attitudes aren't exactly an improvement on Craig Chandler, IMO. What could possibly go wrong?

I can think of one program to slash

Harper thinks he's playing smart with our economy ... or perhaps I should say puppetmaster Flanagan does.

However, I can think of one program that's amazingly slashable - it's called the War in Afghanistan that Harper is so high on. It's costing Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars - and if we are heading into an economic slowdown, I can think of a lot of places to spend that money other than prosecuting a questionable occupation of a foreign power.

H/T: Commenter Stephanie (via e-mail)

Attempting To Defend The Indefensible

The Internet is a wonderful tool sometimes. This afternoon, I was doing a little follow-up on the Boissoin case to see if anything of interest had come up. I didn't find anything hugely significant, but I did find Stephen Boissoin's personal website. Between the wording on the site, and a quick check of the registration of the domain, I'm pretty sure it's legitimately his.

There isn't much real content for the site, but there's a few gems. I'll start with his "about me" page, which turns out to be an amazingly predictable bunch of whining about "media bias" and some incredibly dishonest attempts at claiming that "he doesn't really hate GLBT people", just their lifestyle:

Instead of reporting accurately they relied on unsworn statements of individuals outside of the hearing. They printed as fact information that was demonstrably not true. They blended different answers from my testimony and took one liners from the letter to the editor that is being debated and made it look like I was bashing every and any homosexual. ...
To conclude, hate my views even hate me if you like but at least be responsible enough to have weighed the facts. I do not hate anyone that claims that they are homosexual, bisexual or transgendered. I obviously disagree with the lifestyle and specifically hate the propagation of that lifestyle to impressionable children and teenagers,

Really? The classic line of "Love the sinner, hate the sin" - unfortunately, anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty would have admitted that his position is outright hostile to the lives of otherwise peaceful members of society.

Let's take a look at Boissoin's letter - which has been available on the Internet in some form or another for ages:

My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume.

Now, let's examine the inferences in this statement:

1) He is declaring war. It's not hard to get from a declaration like that to a 'call to arms' against GLBT people in general.
2) GLBT people are implied as preying upon children and youth. Anyone who has done even the slightest bit of study on the subject has long ago figured out that GLBT people are not doing any such thing. Normalizing the idea of being GLB or T is all about helping the next generation make it into adulthood without going through the obstacle course the previous generation experienced.

He repeats the "preying on children" theme a second time in his letter:

From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.

Newsflash for you Mr. Boissoin, but GLBT people know who they are - long before others do. There is no such thing as "recruiting" someone to be GLBT - one either is or is not.

Further, Boissoin's letter goes on to complain that *gasp* GLBT people might actually desire legal and social equality in the world:

Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn't rooted in protecting homosexuals from "gay bashing." The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.

This is a pretty broad-based attack - apparently somewhere in Boissoin's slightly damaged logic, there's a validity in keeping a "lower class" of people suppressed when those people don't align with his particular sense of morality.

It is only a matter of time before some of these morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.

Let's be absolutely clear about one basic fact - GLBT people are NOT necessarily pedophiles, any more than heterosexuals are necessarily not pedophiles. The insinuation that there is any connection between GLBT folk in general and something as vile as NAMBLA (which is essential a pedophile lobby) is a distortion worthy of the worst of WWII's propagandists.

Having read the ruling itself in considerable detail, as well as much of the media stories on the hearings themselves, I find it hard to accept the rather flimsy "I was misquoted" defense that Boissoin puts forth. It seems to me that it is quite clear that the man's opinions are pretty absolute, and have no room for acknowledging the validity of others.

Boissoin talks of "hating the lifestyle". What is this "lifestyle" he talks of? Does he know? Or does he merely suppose that lifestyle? The Bible-beating crowd loves to throw about their criticisms in terms of "the lifestyle", as if GLBT people live deeply immoral, salacious lives steeped in licentious behaviour. However, implying something doesn't make it true. The "hate the lifestyle" routine is little more than a thin veil around the evil of human behaviour - hatred, violence and bullying.

The rest of his site is pretty vacant - except for his links page, which links to "Exodus" (an "ex-gay" ministry program based on "reparative therapy"), and NARTH - an organization full of utter bigots with PhDs who claim that sexual identity is malleable. (and to judge from the utterly horrendous attempts at logic trying to explain away transsexuals, amazingly ignorant of the current state of legitimate research in the domain).

Sorry, Mr. Boissoin, but you can do better than that. Just as your letter was little more than recycled talking points and jingoism that has been vomited forth by various nut case lobbyists in the United States like Dobson, Cameron and LaBarbera before you. The false "compassion" for GLBT people you express persuades nobody except yourself.

Stephen Harper: Lowering Expectations

Remember a few short weeks ago, Harper was pounding on the table demanding that NATO allies supply more troops for Afghanistan?

Well, now he's setting up to be satisfied with less.

Granted, Stephen Harper is like the foam-padded superhero costumes that you see these days - tries to make one look "big-and-strong", but reality is something different.

I've been fairly critical of Harper's performance on the world stage for a variety of reasons, but this whole business around Afghanistan is really beginning to annoy me. First of all, Harper is setting the stage to justify extending our involvement in Afghanistan even if the other NATO countries don't come through - which calls into question one of the key points of the motion voted on in parliament, namely that the engagement's extension was contingent upon a certain minimum level of ally involvement.

The second, and ongoing point here is way that Harper is using our troops' presence in Afghanistan primarily for partisan political gain. His incessant desire to further and further commit this nation to a questionable occupation of a foreign power, under conditions where the "enemy" is in fact the local population, is both poor foreign policy and stands to jeopardize Canada in other important ways such as placing us once again into the cycle of deficit spending to fund daily operations.

Hypocrisy 101

I'm always astounded by the intellectual dishonesty that comes so often from the Bible beating crowd - especially where the topics of sexual identity and abortion are concerned.

Consider this story about an anti abortion campaign up at the University of Calgary for a moment. This is one of the classic "lots of pictures of bloody bits" campaigns that the "pro-lifers" like to bandy about. Frankly, I find them pretty repulsive as a general rule - mostly because they are an attempt to persuade me of their idealized positions by shocking me into some kind of submission. However, in an open, public space (and the University is one such space), the owner of that space does have a right to insist on a certain amount decorum and respect for others. Sure enough, the University has asked for such considerations, and the immediate cry is that of CENSORSHIP.

Well, first of all, nobody's saying that they cannot express themselves, but rather that there are some boundaries on that expression which respect the rights of others as well. The University didn't say they couldn't put up their display, but they did stipulate that the group was expected to do so in a manner that would be less disruptive to the rest of campus. Contrary to the meme being perpetuated by the bible-beating crowd, this is not censorship.

Or, as I discussed back here, there seems to be little problem for them claiming censorship when they toss out their distorted, discredited opinions of GLBT people.

Meanwhile, it's not uncommon for them to feel completely justified in whining loudly about Pride Flags on a few lamp standards; firing people for being transsexual or complaining loudly and incessantly about GLBT demands to be treated as legal and social equals in society.

Now, let's talk about double standards here. The claim is that they are being "censored" when asked to conduct themselves with a certain amount of dignity and decorum that respects the dignity of others who may not share the same views.

Worse, what are these clowns demanding? Nothing less than absolute obedience to their particular idea of "moral conduct". The consequences of failure to comply with these? Violence.

So, it's censorship the moment they are asked to conduct themselves with some decorum, and yet on the other hand, it's just fine to talk about violence against GLBT people as if it's "a good thing" or worse. It's unacceptable to them for anyone to question their interpretation of scripture, or to dare claim that a pregnant woman is perfectly capable of making a moral decision on her own - without having pictures from the operating room trash waved in their face.