Canadawide

Suddenly saying “Merry Christmas” has become a political act. It is part of concerted effort by social conservatives to take back the holidays from those “liberals” wishing to wash away any religious connotations associated with such traditions. The whole debate drives me around the bend.

Both sides mistakenly believe that the traditions they wish to prop up or do away with still have the religious significance they once did. The fact of the matter is various social factors, most notably commercialization, have robbed many of those traditions of any such significance and some simply never had any. I like it that way and I am no mood to have the Christians with help of their liberal opponents instill religious significance into those traditions. Xmas belongs to all Westerners and Christians should stop being so fucking greedy and trying to claim it for themselves. As for those “liberals”, stop with the “winter solstice” thing and claim Christmas for everyone by wishing everyone regardless of creed or religion a Merry Xmas

"Thirdly, the process that was undertaken to rewrite the definition of marriage has been absolutely repellant. Attempting to litigate a change in a social institution based on some misguided notion of "right" is a deplorable practice in and of itself. If this was a widely suported initiative it would simply have been raised directly in Parliament."

One of the jobs of the judiciary is strike down laws that are contrary to the charter. They did that. Your objection to the process amounts to an outright rejection of the charter as trumping other law.

"Fourthly, its provided another case of judicial activism and undermined democracy. There is no provision for "sexual orientation" in the Charter of Rights and freedom to begin with."

You are entitled to your opinion. However, the weight of legal opinion leans heavily in the opposite direction.

"Fifthly, the lack of any sound argument for gay marriage has been absolutely appalling."

Are you serious? There are plenty of reasons for wanting gay marriage. One that seems locked in the closet is that it will help normalize homosexual relationships. This will likely help reduce appalling afflictions that plague gay youth (e.g., monstrously high suicide rates, drug abuse). The arguments offered up against gay marriage are quite simply laughable. I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I hear someone claim that allowing people to marry people of the same sex will damage the institution. The fact of the matter is that gay marriages have been taking place over a year now and no one is any the worse for wear. In 10 years time this will also be true.

"Sixthly, the burden of proof for rewriting thousands of years of tradition and practice is really on those suggesting a change and it hasn't been met."

The opposition to gay marriage collapsed because there are no good arguments for saying homosexuality is wrong. This is akin what happened with women and the vote. The definition of a person did not change. What changed was opinions about who met the critera. With that the bedrock upon which opposition to women voting was based collosped. The burden of proof was then upon those who wanted to continue denying women the right to vote.

“The only real way to curb gun violence is to fight with the culture of violence in our country. Whether this is possible with the huge amount of television (culture) and video games (enabler) we surround ourselves with would also make a good debate.”

“If you google up a UBC report which focused on three cities in interior BC as they were introduced to television, you will see that that study found an increase in violence and petty crime no matter which channels were broadcast."

The introduction of TV did lead to an increase in crime. However, not quite in the way you describe. With the emergence of consumer culture, there was suddenly, to put it simply, a hell of a lot more stuff worth stealing. TVs were one such product. That helps explain it does not matter what kinds of channels were broadcast. Add to this an emerging market for illegal drugs, the war on drugs, rapidly changing social mores and the explosion in the number of young people and you have the foundation for the spike in crime that occurred in the 70s and 80s. (Moralistic attitudes have helped produce the two most violent periods, in terms of sky high homicide rates, over the last 100 years, viz., prohibition and the War on drugs) In countries such as Brazil and Mexico and indeed to a lesser extent in the US, you also have a 5th factor, viz., huge inequalities of wealth. It does not take a genius to figure out that reminding the poor just how poor they are on a daily basis, especially if there is limited social mobility, is a recipe for disaster. It is this that makes the Conservatives tough on crime talk disingenuous. If you are going to intact policies that increase inequalities of wealth, then you can be tough on crime all you want; you are going to have crime.

Incidentally, over the 90s video games have gotten more and more violent. However, youth crime in both Canada and the States is down in the 1990s, especially according to a recent US report, in schools.

The civil marriage option solves nothing for the opponents of gay marriage. People could still marry someone of the same sex and it would have the same legal standing, viz., nothing, as someone marrying someone of the opposite sex. This they do not like and so no social con speaks of Holland as having workable compromise.

Divorced from the rights issue, churches would be free to marry whom they pleased, gay or straight. Social conservatives want to retain the legitimacy conferred on their viewpoint by having the state sanction it. Without this sanction the biblical interpretation of, say, the Baptist council has no more legitimacy in the eyes of the state than does Unitarian interpretation.

Besides, the civil union option is disingenuous. Changing the name of something does not transform it into something else. Civil unions would just be marriage by another name.

That said, there is a lot invested in the word “marriage”. What Harper’s proposed amendment amounts to is this. People can marry someone of the same sex, but the state will not semantically equate these marriages with someone marrying someone of the opposite sex. Equal rights, but not equal recognition. (The so called tradition definition of marriage as being between a man and women is really no definition at all. It is simply a legal clause limiting who can enter into such a legal contract, which is better defined by the rights and legal obligations assumed by two people upon them entering into that contract – which also means it has changed countless times over the years. The Conservative proposal would change this. Marriage would be defined not only by these rights and obligations, but also by who entered into the contract.)

Why is this problematic? Well, go back a ways. There was a time when mixed race marriages were not allowed in some parts of the States. I imagine everyone here has no problem empathizing with the people who wanted to change this. That said, for those of you who think that civil unions for gays and marriage straights is no big deal image a similar proposal having been made for mixed marriages. What would be the basis for you calling one a small difference and the other substantive?

The fact of the matter is that enshrining bigotry in law by mandating that different terms by used to describe the same thing is affront to those seeking equal rights.

I sent the following to PBS.

"During the Wednesday December 1 2004 segment on Canada US relations two comments in Gwen Ifill’s lead up were misleading.

1) GWEN IFILL “Prime Minister Martin's efforts to initiate a thaw in icy U.S./Canadian relations were complicated when a liberal member of parliament, Carolyn Parrish, mocked and abused a President Bush doll on Canadian television. She was expelled from her caucus several days later. But today in Halifax, President Bush emphasized the values the two nations share in common.”

Stated as such it seems that Parrish was expelled from caucus because over her anti-Bush antics. This was not true. Parrish had regularly spotted off about Bush. Referring to the Bush administration, she had said “I hate those Bastards” and she had said of Bush that he was “war like”. She had also referred to the coalition of the willing as “the coalition of the idiots”.
Her comments drew ire of Canada’s business elite and the ire of Canada’s right of center media. Calls for her to be removed from caucus were frequent and Parrish was seen as litmus test for those wanting to gauge whether Martin was living up to his promise of better relations of the US.

However, for three reasons removing her from caucus was proving difficult. First, the Liberals do not have a majority and so could ill afford to loose an MP. Second, the ability of the Liberals to offer up Parrish’s head on a platter was constrained by Bush’s immense unpopularity and the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war. Finally, further complicating things was the Liberal party’s relationship with the right wing print media. During the lead up to the Iraq war, one of Jean Chrétien’s aides had called Bush a “moron” in ear shot of a National Post reporter. Besides being the Canadian version of the Washington Times, during the time Conrad Black controlled the paper, the National Post and Liberal party were more or less at war. This alleged breach of journalistic protocol was seen as continuation of that war. (The aide eventually resigned.) Martin, for all whole of reasons, including Liberal internal politics, was not about to give these same media factions the satisfaction of thinking they had a hand in removing Parrish from caucus.

(The National Post is part of large media chain that includes most of Canada’s dailies. Notable exceptions are the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. The National Post is the most conservative of those papers. However, the same ideological viewpoint is shared by all and this includes the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province, Vancouver’s two dailies. In November 2002, the Vancouver Sun ran a front page editorial -- no author’s name given – critical of the Chrétien government’s alleged anti-Americanism. More recently, they ran a 3 quarter page guest editorial exploring some of the same themes. The author said anti-Americanism is so bad it is compares to 1930’s anti-Semitism in under Hitler.

To put this into proper prospective, let me just say that there is some truth to O’Reilly calling Vancouver “Vansterdam” and that compared to Vancouver San Francisco would be considered conservative. On a different note, the presence of such a discourse should also help explain Mark Kingwell’s angry response to Margaret Wente talk of anti-Americanism and why according to a recent poll the majority of Canadians said they resented being called anti-American.)

Returning to Parrish, her stomping on the doll was at once done to provoke her political opponents, many of whom American equivalent of a Francophile, and at the same time make light of her own reputation.

What did Parrish in were comments she made about Paul Martin. She said of the Liberal party that she has “absolutely no loyalty to this team. None” and of Martin “if he loses the next election and he has to resign, I wouldn’t shed a tear over it.”

2) GWEN IFILL “Eighty percent of Canadians agreed with their government's opposition to the Iraq War, a sentiment which played out yesterday in the streets of Ottawa. Mr. Bush, however, remained unapologetic.”

This is technically true, but highly misleading. Public opinion in Canada was not nearly as soundly against the war as in most parts of “Old Europe”. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad a poll in English speaking Canada showed that a slight majority of Canadians supported American actions. In the lead up to the war a slight majority opposed US actions. Quebecers, on the other hand, were always strongly against the war.

That said, at no time did any part of Canada favor Canada joining the coalition of the willing. 70 percent of Canadians opposed at the start of the war and that number now stands at 80%.
On the topic of coalition of the willing, opposition leader Stephan Harper nailed it when he said that Canada’s was “abrasively neutral.” As American ambassador Paul Cellucci pointed out, “The Canadian naval vessels will provide more support to this war in Iraq than most of the 46 countries that are fully supporting our effort there.” Canada was, in other words, part of the coalition of the willing, but was not willing to say so. The fact that this was not good enough for the Bush administration infuriated many Liberals and showed an appalling ignorance of Canada’s political landscape.

As mentioned above, the vast majority of Quebecers opposed the war. If Canada had officially chosen to become part of the coalition of the willing, it very well could have spelt the break up of the country. A bare majority of Quebecers voted to stay part of Canada in 1995 (50.4 %). The separatists do not need to be handed any more ammunition and as with past wars this would have been a major bone of contention inside Quebec.

Besides these two comments there were a few other things that Gwen Ifill did not touch on but should have.

First, Bush’s speech writers really did their homework and hit on many points relevant to Canadians. Besides the obligatory jokes about hockey, Bush captured Canada’s take on US Canada relations quite well by quoting Robert Thompson’s line about the US and by referring to Trudeau’s famous characterization of Canada US relations. Bush: “I realize, and many Americans realize, that it's not always easy to sleep next to the elephant. (Laughter) As a member of Canada's parliament said in the 1960s, "the United States is our friend whether we like it or not." (Laughter and applause) When all is said and done, we are friends, and we like it.” Prime Minister Trudeau: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” Such cultural references were important for more than just establishing a common bound with the audience. As Rick Mercer would have told you, ever since the Prime Minister “Poutine” incident, Bush had the reputation of not caring about Canada and this was reflected in his perceived lack of knowledge of the country.

Second, the whole country it seemed was rightly or wrongly miffed over the Bush Administrations handling of a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of 4 Canadian servicemen. Internationally this was not a big story, but it received plenty of press here for months on end.

Third, something should have been said about the so called war on drugs.
Much has been made of Canada’s plans to decriminalize marijuana and the strong backing for such an initiative, 78%. However, this is really only half the story. According to one poll 43% of Canadians favor outright legalization and BC that number is over 50%. Once more, in some cities a de facto state of decriminalization already exists. This is certainly true of Vancouver. As Vancouver police spokesperson, Anne Drennan noted "in Vancouver, we very rarely arrest for simple possession of marijuana. There would have to be exigent circumstances."

The whole institutional infrastructure keeping marijuana from becoming legal is quickly becoming unglued. A 2002 special committee Senate report (the Senate is strongly Liberal) recommended in stark language that the drug be legalized. “Marijuana is not illegal because it is dangerous; it is dangerous because it is illegal.” The NDP advocates that the drug be legalized and outgoing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien felt comfortable enough to say this about the prospect of decriminalization: “I will have my money for my fine and a joint in my other hand.” Indeed, between January of 2001 and December 2003, the very Constitutionality of Canada’s possession laws were in question. They were struck down in 4 Provinces and in Ontario it was legal to possess 15 grams or less for some 4 months.

The only bulwark against outright legalization over the long term is fear of what the US might do. Still this is no more than a just a finger in the dike. Sooner or later the dam will burst.
Canada’s approach to hard drugs is proving equally contentious.

In a private meeting with then mayor Philip Owen and future mayor Larry Campbell, Drug Czar Walters had threatened action if Vancouver went ahead with a plan for safe injection sites. Namely, Canadians could face major border slow downs. Owen described the meeting thus: “It was the most unsatisfactory meeting of my life.” “The pressure was intense. John Walters had about 30 officers with him, special agents. At the door there was a guy with the bulge of a gun under his clothes.”

Shortly after Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell road to power in the biggest landslide in Vancouver municipal history on platform centered on setting up safe injection sites. John Walters then took the matter public, telling a Vancouver board of trade audience, in what amounted to a thinly disguised threat not to take things too far, that we were only making matters worse. Larry Campbell quipped afterwards that the notion that safe injection sites would make things worse was akin to saying “flies cause garbage”.

Since then, Toronto Montreal and other cities have followed Vancouver’s lead. Campbell, meanwhile, has forged ahead with plans to distribute free heroin to addicts and to set up safe snorting rooms for cocaine users."