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Social conservatives are here, and not going away
Vilification is over the top. If gay-marriage opponents are the fringe, then the fringe is mighty wide
CHARLES W. MOORE
Without the usual diaribe, is this reality to you?
Vilification is over the top. If gay-marriage opponents are the fringe, then the fringe is mighty wide
CHARLES W. MOORE
For folks quick to accuse those who disagree with them of hatred and bigotry, left-liberals are awfully good at dishing out the name-calling and vituperation, as we've seen during the past week or so in the feeding frenzy of outrage-***-schadenfreude over former Canadian Alliance family-issues critic Larry Spencer's comments on homosexuality.
Words like "homophobe," "redneck," "fringe extremist," "bigot" and "troglodyte" have thickened the air. The famously homosexual NDP MP Svend Robinson called not only Spencer, but the entire Alliance caucus, (and by implication anyone who opposes the gay political agenda) "Neanderthals."
"It's a bit like picking up a rock and exposing the creatures underneath it to the sunlight and watching who scurries away," Robinson is quoted saying.
This is nothing new. Earlier this fall, Tory MP Scott Brison, also gay, called his caucus colleague and former interim PC leader, Elsie Wayne, a "vile cow" for her negative critique of gay advocacy. NDP MP and former party leader Alexa McDonough accused Wayne of "spewing hatred," describing her views as "screaming intolerance."
By contrast, you'll search in vain for any such outbursts of ad hominem contempt or condescension in Larry Spencer's remarks. Indeed, Spencer said that he would welcome Scott Brison as a caucus colleague. "He's a great guy and he's got a lot of great ideas. If he can live with us we can live with him."
The liberal left jumped enthusiastically on any pretext to denounce the Canadian Alliance as a bunch of rabidly bigoted Western whackos, but at least three of the five current parliamentary parties have sitting MPs who vocally oppose the political gay rights program.
The Tories have Wayne, for one, and the day after the Larry Spencer story broke, David Kilgour, Liberal MP for Edmonton Southeast and secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region, told the Edmonton Journal that he opposes gay marriage in part because once the government makes same-sex marriage legal, it will have no logical reason not to allow three people to get married. "And, I'm afraid, and I'm not the only one afraid of this, it could lead to mothers marrying sons and all kinds of things," Kilgour said.
Toronto-area Liberal MPs Dennis Mills and Tom Wappell, along with several other backbench Liberal caucus members, have a long history of opposing the gay-rights agenda, which torpedos innuendo that such opposition can be conveniently dismissed as western Bible-belt extremism.
Then there's the geezer theory. Larry Spencer is 61 and Elsie Wayne, 71. The National Post's Colby Cosh penned a smarmily patronizing op-ed suggesting that opposition to the homosexualization of society and sexual libertinism in general is largely a phenomenon of over-the-hill and slightly dotty oldsters unable to adapt to moral evolution in society. "It is hard for younger people to understand that conspiratorial explanations for (sexual propriety's) collapse might present themselves as natural to an older mind," Cosh condescended.
Well, I'm nine years younger than Larry Spencer, came of age in the 1960s, and am a former hippie and a card-carrying member of the rock-and-roll generation, albeit not the MTV generation, have never been west of Ontario, and I'm steadfastly opposed to the gay political agenda, not only because I'm a traditionalist Christian, but also out of reasoned conviction.
I think that the assertion that same-gender sexual relations are natural and normal is nonsensical. I'm currently on the cusp of geezerdom, but I held these same convictions in my teens and 20s. And so do a lot of Canadians younger than I am.
Kilgour has noted that two-thirds of his Edmonton constituents oppose gay marriage, and a new national COMPAS poll finds that 63 per cent of respondents said they would strongly or somewhat support keeping the current definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Are these people all fringe extremist nuts and bigots? If so, the fringe is mighty wide.
The evident fond hope of gay activists and their lib-left fellow-travelers that time is on their side, that all they have to do is wait for the ignorant old bigots and homophobes to die off before they achieve their objective of pan-sexualist utopia, just ain't going to happen. While tolerance of those we disagree with is a keystone element of civilization, acceptance and approval are something else entirely. For devout and faithful Christians, approval of gay sex is a non-starter and will remain so. And Christianity, outside of Western liberal nations where it's in a slump, is the fastest-growing movement on the planet.
To paraphrase another group's slogan: "We're here; there are a lot more of us than you imagine; and we're not going away." Agreement is impossible, but we somehow have to accommodate each other, and that accommodation has to be a two-way street.
Charles W. Moore is a Nova Scotia-based writer and editor.
© Copyright 2003 Montreal Gazette
Words like "homophobe," "redneck," "fringe extremist," "bigot" and "troglodyte" have thickened the air. The famously homosexual NDP MP Svend Robinson called not only Spencer, but the entire Alliance caucus, (and by implication anyone who opposes the gay political agenda) "Neanderthals."
"It's a bit like picking up a rock and exposing the creatures underneath it to the sunlight and watching who scurries away," Robinson is quoted saying.
This is nothing new. Earlier this fall, Tory MP Scott Brison, also gay, called his caucus colleague and former interim PC leader, Elsie Wayne, a "vile cow" for her negative critique of gay advocacy. NDP MP and former party leader Alexa McDonough accused Wayne of "spewing hatred," describing her views as "screaming intolerance."
By contrast, you'll search in vain for any such outbursts of ad hominem contempt or condescension in Larry Spencer's remarks. Indeed, Spencer said that he would welcome Scott Brison as a caucus colleague. "He's a great guy and he's got a lot of great ideas. If he can live with us we can live with him."
The liberal left jumped enthusiastically on any pretext to denounce the Canadian Alliance as a bunch of rabidly bigoted Western whackos, but at least three of the five current parliamentary parties have sitting MPs who vocally oppose the political gay rights program.
The Tories have Wayne, for one, and the day after the Larry Spencer story broke, David Kilgour, Liberal MP for Edmonton Southeast and secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region, told the Edmonton Journal that he opposes gay marriage in part because once the government makes same-sex marriage legal, it will have no logical reason not to allow three people to get married. "And, I'm afraid, and I'm not the only one afraid of this, it could lead to mothers marrying sons and all kinds of things," Kilgour said.
Toronto-area Liberal MPs Dennis Mills and Tom Wappell, along with several other backbench Liberal caucus members, have a long history of opposing the gay-rights agenda, which torpedos innuendo that such opposition can be conveniently dismissed as western Bible-belt extremism.
Then there's the geezer theory. Larry Spencer is 61 and Elsie Wayne, 71. The National Post's Colby Cosh penned a smarmily patronizing op-ed suggesting that opposition to the homosexualization of society and sexual libertinism in general is largely a phenomenon of over-the-hill and slightly dotty oldsters unable to adapt to moral evolution in society. "It is hard for younger people to understand that conspiratorial explanations for (sexual propriety's) collapse might present themselves as natural to an older mind," Cosh condescended.
Well, I'm nine years younger than Larry Spencer, came of age in the 1960s, and am a former hippie and a card-carrying member of the rock-and-roll generation, albeit not the MTV generation, have never been west of Ontario, and I'm steadfastly opposed to the gay political agenda, not only because I'm a traditionalist Christian, but also out of reasoned conviction.
I think that the assertion that same-gender sexual relations are natural and normal is nonsensical. I'm currently on the cusp of geezerdom, but I held these same convictions in my teens and 20s. And so do a lot of Canadians younger than I am.
Kilgour has noted that two-thirds of his Edmonton constituents oppose gay marriage, and a new national COMPAS poll finds that 63 per cent of respondents said they would strongly or somewhat support keeping the current definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Are these people all fringe extremist nuts and bigots? If so, the fringe is mighty wide.
The evident fond hope of gay activists and their lib-left fellow-travelers that time is on their side, that all they have to do is wait for the ignorant old bigots and homophobes to die off before they achieve their objective of pan-sexualist utopia, just ain't going to happen. While tolerance of those we disagree with is a keystone element of civilization, acceptance and approval are something else entirely. For devout and faithful Christians, approval of gay sex is a non-starter and will remain so. And Christianity, outside of Western liberal nations where it's in a slump, is the fastest-growing movement on the planet.
To paraphrase another group's slogan: "We're here; there are a lot more of us than you imagine; and we're not going away." Agreement is impossible, but we somehow have to accommodate each other, and that accommodation has to be a two-way street.
Charles W. Moore is a Nova Scotia-based writer and editor.
© Copyright 2003 Montreal Gazette
Without the usual diaribe, is this reality to you?
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