Make no mistake, the right opposes ALL gay rights
While in Canada the debate is often sugar-coated, in the US you get a more clear picture of what happens when equal rights for gays and lesbians is not the national law of the land. While Conservatives here say they oppose gay marriage but support "civil unions," the fact of the matter is, they don't really support those either - civil unions are just the least they can get away with. If they had their way, they'd be making like this group and instead leading an organized campaign to eliminate sexual orientation from anti-discrimination laws (and, incidentally, Harper and his Canadian Alliance voted against including sexual orientation in the first place, just to drive that point home.) But Canadians are a more tolerant people, and would not accept such obvious displays of bigotry from the Conservatives. So the Conservatives camoflage their bigotry, saying in Orwellian fashion that their civil union plan is just as "equal" as the law which currently exists, which is already as equal as you can get.
The anti-gay movement in the US and the anti-gay movement in Canada share as their motivation sheer, hateful, neurotic, sub-intellectual bigotry against gay people. The fact that they're pushing for different things legally at the moment doesn't mean they both don't want the exact same thing as their end result. Pat O'Brien and Grant Hill want nothing less than the exact same thing James Dobson and Jerry Falwell want - to set the clock back fifty years, force gays back into the closet under fear of discrimination, physical violence or worse, take away all of the legal and social advances the gay civil rights movement has made, and return to a time where a gay person dying in a hospital died alone, instead of with their life-long partner at their side, because that partner isn't "family" and has no way of becoming so.
THAT is why Tony Blair's civil unions (or John Kerry's proposed ones) are different from Stephen Harper's. Blair did it out a desire to extend rights to gays and lesbians. Harper wants civil unions to take away rights already extended.
posted by Ryan Ringer @ 6/03/2006 11:53:00 a.m.
19 comments
19 Comments:
I only the title of your post, I have heard the rhetoric already. By "gay rights" do you mean that "gays" should have special rights that no-one else has ? Or the same rights, but, how could they have the same rights? Two gay men could never have children except by adoption or atificial means. So how can they ever be equal and have the same rights, a homosexual man can never breast feed a child, hence shall never be equal, ever. The whole idea of equal rights is a complete sham.
You hit the nail right on the head BG. And judging by the responses of the two knuckledraggers before me you hit a nerve with them. Remember if people like that think you're wrong you must be doing something right.
Ordinarily I would argue against their idiocy, and ask where the hell they got the idea of "special" rights from what you wrote, but I've found that people who's motivation is based on fear and hate don't really care to listen to reason.
Also, hh, the bitter irony is that those people are the ones arguing in favour of "special rights" - for heterosexuals only!
" Also, hh, the bitter irony is that those people are the ones arguing in favour of "special rights" - for heterosexuals only!" Blue Grit
Yep. This is one of those ironies I laugh at whenever I see this argument being raised in what appears to be in all seriousness by those opposed to gay rights generally and SSM in particular. It was only 40 years ago that the RCMP intelligence unit (turned into CSIS in 1984) was routinely investigating Canadian citizens for their sexual orientation and in the case of government employees if found would cost them their jobs, ostensibly on security grounds. I know this because one of my parents had worked in that unit from 1932 until 1965 and what that parent had to say about these investigations was quite disturbing. Even then that parent did not agree with this.
The thing is that gay people are not getting "special rights" that no one else has but rather are getting the rights everyone else had and which they were denied. It really is that simple, too bad even that degree of simplicity is beyond the ability of those advancing this argument.
No, the only people getting special rights in Canada right now are native people. I don't think they deserve it. (I don't think anyone deserves more rights than anyone else)
Is Baird realy a fag he should lose his cabinet post if he is.
Homo's always have an alterier motive and can only complain.
Well gayandright, I present to you the posts of Mssrs. blanks57 and hearhere as some evidence, anyway, particularly:
"Is Baird realy a fag he should lose his cabinet post if he is.
Homo's always have an alterier motive and can only complain."
Don't worry Ryan, we'll get there where one day you and others like you will be thought of the same as everyone else. It may not happen in our life time but humans will evolve. Like scotian said "was only 40 years ago that the RCMP intelligence unit (turned into CSIS in 1984) was routinely investigating Canadian citizens for their sexual orientation" Now obviously things aren't moving as fast as you or I would like but they are moving, that's the important thing.
Uhh yes, anonymous bloggers mouthing off are always an accurate barometre of any particular group. It wouldn't surprise me if blanks57 were a Liberal with too much time on his hands. Then again, with Liberals destined to be out of power for at least another election cycle, I suspect many will be afflicted with this condition in the years to come.
"While Conservatives here say they oppose gay marriage but support "civil unions," the fact of the matter is, they don't really support those either - civil unions are just the least they can get away with"
Speak for yourself, if you like, but don't put words in my mouth.
"Pat O'Brien and..." Oh, and which party did Pat O'Brien resign from in order to vote his conscience?
Against Gay Jewish Marriage, for Gay Civil Union.
There are two important issues here.
The first, which gayconservative raised, is that you need to back up your assertions with proof - it's no good to simply say this is what they believe without proof that is indeed what the CPC believes.
The second issue is to distinguish between marriage and civil union. Marriage is religious union of a couple, relating to religious law. A civil union, as the name implies, relates to the civil law law, the law of the land.
Being against gay marriage, as I understand it, is an intellectually defendable position. See the link above for more.
p.s. Ryan, I think you may want to point out that you aren't gay (or at least I think you're not; somebody's assumed that based on your support for gays' rights that you are gay). Incidentally, for the person who seems to have drawn that conclusion - I support gays' rights and am straight.
Getting back to the inital point, it's possible to defend gays' equality in rights without forcing religious institutions into performing something their religious beliefs oppose.
lecentre, it's not a defensible position; you're making the flawed assumption that religion and gay marriage are antitheses, when in fact there are religious people who support it, and there are GAY religious people who want to partake in religious marriage, sanctioned by religious leaders who approve. The United Church, Canada's largest Protestant denomination, is officially pro-gay marriage.
So to be against gay marriages for those people is in fact still discriminatory bigotry. Also, giving non-religious heterosexuals the title of marriages shows that it is NOT an entirely religious concept, that in fact it is a part of the state as well (agree or disagree with this.)
And for the record, yes I am gay.
Right on Ryan. Good post. These crazy bigots just don't get it. Civil unions are just a smoke screen for returning gays to second class status. As the courts and all kind of legal experts have pointed out it's just another case of "separate but equal" -- the same screwy arguments the segregationists used in the deep South to discriminate against black people.But why should we be surprised? The same insane hate that resulted in the lynching of thousands of black men, is the same insane and evil hate directed at gay people today. The bubba segregationists of those dark days are the wacko homophobes of today. And they are still really sick people.
If they were dogs instead of bubbas I'm afraid we'd be forced to put them down.
As it is I can only urge the authorities to confine them to an insane asylum or even a zoo. Until the vote is over.
And we've won :-)
Okay, this montreal simon guy sounds like he has rabies. Nobody let him bite you.
But back to the topic at hand. Ryan et al, if you seriously believe that support for civil unions but opposition to gay marriage constitutes "evil" and "bigotry", then you clearly don't know what those two terms really mean, and the historical consequences they have had.
For some to compare the gay drive to define marriage in a pro-gay manner (which, again, I support) to the US black civil rights movement is, quite frankly, appalling.
Oddly enough, the most Liberal Left country on the planet won't even touch the subject.
Here's the deal. I'm not against gay marriage, I'm against calling marriage of any type a "right". How exactly does it fall under the issue of "rights". We have already heard of cases of ministers in trouble for not performing gay unions, does that not in fact take a freedom away from those people.
I did a post today dealing with the issue from the perspective of rights, not the lifestyle angle. I'm just not buying the idea of calling it a "right" and putting it in the Charter....
Marriage is not a right, but equality under the law is.
"A homosexual man can never breast feed a child, hence shall never be equal, ever."
Aside from this being a moronic way to prove an unsupportable claim, it's technically not true. Given proper prolactin and oxytocin injections, men can be made to lactate in small amounts.
An injection of levity, and common sense, is what is needed here.
Gay and Right. Your failure to recognize that many of your ReformCon pals are nothing but bigots never ceases to amaze me. How you can support a Party that's working to strip away our rights, and brag about it, is simply beyond the pale. As is your constant demeaning of those who have fought very hard, for very long, with very few resources to give us the freedoms you seem to take for granted today. This marriage is about equality, dignity and respect. But how would you know that when you don't even respect your own brothers and sisters? I may be a rabid dog as you say. But at least I walk on my hind legs open and proud of who I am. Not crawling on all fours like you. Woof. Woof.
simon:
What exactly are we talking about here? The Liberals want equal rights for gay couples WITH the marriage title. Conservatives want equal rights for gay couples WITHOUT the marriage title.
That's it - a title. This is not the equivalent of the US black civil rights movement, or the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. Get a grip.
As for my "brothers and sister" - being gay is not a cult. Gay people, believe it or not, have differing views on different issues, just like everybody else. I find it hilarious when gay lefties just automatically assume that every other gay person has to think the way they do.
I support gay marriage, and I feel comfortable supporting it from within the Conservative Party. I'm a small-c conservative, and as such I cannot vote for the Nanny-Statist claptrap coming from the Liberals and NDP. If either of those parties were capable of coming up with non-socialist/non-political-correctness-driven platform, I may consider my options.
Until then, I'll vote for the one party that won't make me, as a taxpayer, pay for the latest nanny-state fad of the day (eg. state-subsidized daycare).
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