Institute for Canadian Values Hates Gay Kids

A hate group called the Institute for Canadian Values has been fighting against Bill 13, an anti-bullying law that would require publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario to allow gay students to refer to themselves as gay.  Specifically, it would allow students, by their own initiative, to form gay-straight alliance clubs, if they so wish.

To support their campaign against this law, the ICV have released the results of a poll they themselves conducted, which supposedly show that 90% of people share their position.

If you’ve been outside of a church basement in the last twenty years, those results should sound like bullshit to you.

Of course, the hate group is very fishy on details, like what the exact question was, and who they called; and those things really matter. While polls can be conducted scientifically and produce quasi-useful results, dubious pollsters, especially ones with political agendas (like the ICV), can very easily influence the results of a poll.  Here’s a clip from the BBC series Yes, Minister which shows this in action:

So, what could the ICV have done to push the results their way?  Well, just look at the other results of the poll they bragged about:

The survey found schools should not educate young children about sex or ask elementary students to participate in Gay Pride parades for anti-bullying purposes.

Neither of those have anything what-so-ever to do with Bill 13, or any other proposed law, for that matter.  But just imagine the fraudulent pollster asking a parent if they support teaching five year olds about sex positions, and if the kids should be made to march in gay pride parades with half-naked men, and then asking, ‘should the government force schools to start gay-straight alliance clubs?’

It sounds a lot like what we saw in the clip, doesn’t it?

Posted in Atheism, Ontario | 2 Comments

Public Problem, Private Priorities

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is talking about selling off Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One again. Despite the fact that they both bring in large sums of money for the province, and the last time the PCs tried to sell them ended in disaster.  Hudak said:

Consumers would still be under the protection of the Ontario Energy Board while taxpayers would benefit from using sale proceeds to pay down debt.

Why wait a year for a million dollars, when we can have ten dollars today!  Hudak continued:

Investors like public sector pension plans and major power companies will demand, and get, the kind of management that values efficiency and cost control.

Such funds are far more likely to keep a lid on the costs of refurbishing old nuclear reactors at Darlington, or building new ones as planned.

See, that’s the problem.  We need someone to fix old nuclear plants, cause when you just leave them to rot, they can cause problems.  A public company, whose primary objective is the good of the community, will fix it; a private company, who only wants to maximize profit, will not.

If we sell our power generation monopoly to a private company, they will have no financial motivation to plan for the future.  They will have no reason to increase supply before it is too late, and they will not invest in renewable energy until there’s a catastrophic fossil fuel shortage.

Cutting corners is fine in many businesses, but the stability of our energy supply, for both environmental and business reasons, can not be subject to penny-pinching.

 

 

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Inspired, Not Ordered

Unwed teenage mother Bristol Palin (daughter of ex-politician/vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin) has criticized Barack Obama’s support of gay marriage on the grounds that, and I’m quoting here: ” in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.”

The crux of her argument, though, is that Obama said he was inspired by his daughters, who don’t share his generation’s inbred hatred of gay people.  Obama:

“You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

The young Palin  tries to paint this as hypocritical, citing the fact that former Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann was questioned by the press about her stated Christian duty to be submissive to her husband.

Once, Michele Bachmann, for example, was asked during a debate, “As president, would you be submissive to your husband?”

People automatically assume that a Christian female President isn’t capable of making decisions without her spouse’s stamp of approval.  (I should add female Republican candidates –liberal women don’t get the same kind of questions.)

So are all those reporters who feared excessive family intervention in the White House all up in arms over the President’s announcement yesterday?  Um.  Not quite.

Bachmann inability to work independent of her husband was not questioned because she was a Christian, it was questioned because she herself said that she blindly did what her husband told her to do, even when she disagreed with it.  Bachmann:

Back in October 2006, recounting her life journey to an audience at the Living Word Christian Center, Bachmann talked about “receiving Jesus” at 16, studying hard, meeting her future husband at college, and earning a law degree. “My husband said ‘Now you need to go and get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.’ Tax law! I hate taxes—why should I go and do something like that?” she told the audience. “But the Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.”

Bachmann said she never had taken a tax course, “never had a desire for it,” but “I was going to be faithful to what I felt God was calling me to do through my husband.” Later, when the opportunity to run for Congress arose, “my husband said, ‘You need to do this,’ and I wasn’t so sure.” She became sure two days later, after praying and fasting with her husband.

There’s nothing wrong with talking to your spouse, getting ideas from them, or changing your mind because they convinced you otherwise; but if Bachmann had become president, the fact that she takes orders from her husband and follows them without question is kind of problematic.

And it’s not at all similar to Obama supposedly getting an idea from his kids.

I’m too cynical to think that Obama looked upon his innocent children, saw their acceptance and love for people different from themselves, and was inspired to change his own views.  Instead, I think he saw in his daughters the unmistakable fact that the political winds have changed, and that it was now safe to say out loud the opinions he had always held, but was too afraid to state for fear of losing an election.

As Obama said, this is a generational issue; and aside from a few relics like Palin, the old generation is well on its way out.

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Obama Supports Gay Marriage

U.S. President Barack Obama has come out as a supporter of same-sex marriage.

President Barack Obama said in an interview with ABC that “it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

He was pro-gay marriage early in his political career, but got very wishy-washy once the white house started looking like a possibility. In the past few years, he has only said that his ‘opinion is evolving’ on the issue.

He cited his children as a reason for his shift:

“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” he said. “You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents.

“And Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them, and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

So why now?  It’s an election year, and he has to win back the ardent supporters that got him the win the first time around.  Many of them have been disillusioned by Obama’s middle-ground, appeasing-the-right style of politics that left dreams of universal health care, an end to the wars, and countless others unfulfilled.

The fact is, Romney will have no problem stating his opposition to gay marriage emphatically (and after this announcement, you can be damn sure he will).  Had Obama remained off-the-record on the issue, everyone would have thought that he was secretly against them, anyways.  At least now, he’ll make the slight majority of Americans who support gay marriage happy; even if he alienates the 48% who oppose it in the process.

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What Voters Want

50% of Americans support the legalization of gay marriage, while 48% oppose.  Of course, that’s the national average.  If you take any particular regional subsection, you’ll get different numbers.

Take North Carolina, for example.  Yesterday, they voted 61% to 39% in favour of amending their constitution to ban gay marriages; this, despite the fact that allowing the majority to vote on the rights on a minority is unconstitutional.

Now, the national numbers have risen sharply in the last few years, and continue to rise.  This is partially because of greater awareness, and partially because of the demographic breakdown of the two sides.  Those opposing gay marriage tend to be old, and those in favour tend to be young, and the old have a habit of dying.  That gay marriage will be legal in America is a foregone conclusion, and yet politicians, even on the left, are hesitant to support it (observe the two headlines from CNN’s website at the top of this post).

The reason for this is also one of demographic breakdown.  The old love to vote, and the young don’t. There’s also an ideological divide.  Fear seems to be a much stronger motivator to get out the vote than love is; and conservative politicians have become highly adept at exploiting that.

When you get right down to it, it’s not the people of America that U.S. politicians have to answer to, it’s the voters.  And those voters, at times, don’t represent the will of the people.  One of the purposes of a constitution is the prevent a ‘tyranny of the majority’ where a majority of people vote to oppress a minority.  But it’s not the majority that have tyrannical powers in politics, it’s the motivated.

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But We’re Not Like America

If we were more like America, Conservative politicians would be fighting amongst themselves to get Charles McVety’s endorsement, he would be invited to speak at all their conventions, and he’d have weekly meetings with the Prime Minister to discuss ‘spiritual issues.’

But we’re not like America. An in Canada, McVety is considered little more than a hateful crank.

Yesterday, he spoke to a Queen’s Park committee about the upcoming anti-bullying legislation and made a few dumb arguments:

“The bill requires that Christian leaders support activities and organizations on homosexuality, that is led by homosexuals, even if that is antithetical to the teaching for that institution. This is overreaching. It’s not the position of the government to force religious leaders to teach something that they say must be taught.”

The bill requires publicly funded schools to allow the formation, by students, of gay-straight alliance clubs.  It requires no action on the part of the school or its employees, other than their grudging acceptance that gay people exist.

Of course, religious schools could avoid even that minor level of decency by turning down taxpayer money.

McVety said he’s not opposed to a bill banning bullying in schools but objects to singling out gay and bisexual students for protection, calling it an example of “Orwellian double-speak” that would make some students “more equal than others”.

It’s so gracious of him to not oppose anti-bullying laws.

It’s true that kids are bullied for a lot of reasons, but gay kids do need special consideration in Ontario because the publicly-funded Catholic school board has an official policy against them.  There’s not official church doctrine against being smart, or dumb, or fat, or short; but there is one against being gay.

 

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Wear Your Arrogance With Pride

A 12th Grade student at Forest Height Community School, William Swinimer, was suspended for repeatedly wearing a t-shirt that read ‘Life is Wasted Without Jesus,’ after being told by school officials that shirt violated the school’s non-discriminatory clothing policy.

Yesterday, the school board reversed the decision.

Supporters of the student claimed that this was a freedom of speech issue, which is what people always say when they agree with the message in question.  It brings to mind the recent ‘controversy’ when a Muslim group posted an ad in a Toronto subway station which read, ‘There is no god but Allah.’  Christian groups were livid over that sign, claiming it was an attack on their religion.

Arguably, the student’s message was more confrontational than that of Muslim group.  The Muslims were just stating the base tenet of their (and everyone elses’) religion; that theirs is the only true god.  The student, on the other hand, was making a negative judgment of non-Christians, saying that their lives are worth less.  If the student’s shirt said, ‘I love Jesus,’ it’d be an open and shut case of free speech, but it didn’t.  The shirt wasn’t expressing what the student thought about religion, it was saying what he thought about other people.

Given the fact that children are legally compelled to go to school, I think it’s fair for the school to put limits on speech in the interest of making it a safe environment.   The t-shit in question is kind of a gray area, it may be malicious or simple arrogance on the part of the student, and I think that intent matters when it comes to speech.

I understand why the school board decided to wash their hands of it; but in doing so, they’ve set a new president.  What will they do when a student shows up to class with a ‘People are Dumber with Jesus’ t-shirt?

 

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Star Hates Ford, Sun Hates Star

Dear Toronto Sun,

When criticizing your competition, the Toronto Star, for their obsessive crusade against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, you probably shouldn’t post four separate stories about it.  It makes you look like you’re on an obsessive crusade, or something.

For the record, though, I actually agree with the Sun on this one.  If you’re not familiar with the story, a Toronto Star reporter was stalking outside the Mayor’s house, taking pictures with a cellphone.  Ford called 911 (like he always does) then chased down the reporter and yelled at him.  Now, the Star is playing the victim.

If you want to play shallow, paparazzi-style journalist; you accept the risk of being punched in the face.  Seriously, what was he trying to get a picture of?  If he photographed Ford doing something embarrassing, would the Star have published it?  If so, quit whining. (Not that the Toronto Sun is a paragon of journalistic integrity)

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Foreign Workers To Be Paid Less.

During the Ontario election, the Progressive Conservatives were outraged by a proposal from the governing Liberals to give a $10,000 tax credit to companies who hire skilled foreign workers to help them get accredited in their profession.  The PCs said that such a law gave ‘foreign workers’ an unfair advantage, which was unacceptable given the already high unemployment rate amongst current Canadian citizens.

I wonder how Tim Hudak will react to this new policy from the federal Conservatives.

The Conservative party has just changed the laws governing foreign temp workers, allowing employers to pay them 15% less.  For Ontario, that means an effective minimum wage of $9.40.

It’s great news for corporations who are now legally entitled to exploit immigrants; but bad news for the immigrants themselves who want to be treated equally, and also bad for non-immigrants trying to get minimum wage jobs who now have to compete against cheaper labour.

I’m not against immigration, but I think we can agree that if someone comes to Canada, they should be treated fairly and equally; both for their sake, and that of the people already living here.  Creating a sub-class of slave workers isn’t something a democracy should be doing.

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Canadian Bank Bailouts

PM Harper has been bragging over the last few years about his ‘expert handling’ of the economic downturn, in particular the fact that our banks emerged largely unscathed (though that’s mostly because of regulations put into place by the previous Liberal government that prevented them from running the same scam the American banks were).

Of course, the banks still had problems.  The recession hit, and a large number of people found themselves unable to pay their mortgages, but these were largely downplayed by the Harper government,  both during the last election, and on the world stage, where Harper has been trying to present himself as a Conservative financial messiah.

Well, turns out things weren’t going as well as the Conservatives wanted us to believe.  A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has calculated that Canadian banks received upwards of $114 billion in bailout money, $3400 for every person in the country.

In fact, CIBC, BMO, and Scotiabank received more money than they were even worth at the time, as much as 1.5 times in the case of CIBC.

Most of the money was funneled through a government agency, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which bought bad mortgages from the banks, letting them off the hook, while saddling the taxpayers in the process.  Because the CMHC was simply buying mortgages, the banks had no obligation to pay anything back.

It could be that this was the right thing to do, and Canada has done better than most other countries (though that has nothing to do with Harper’s leadership); but the issue here is not so much what was done, but that we were lied to about it.

Not that it’s a surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention, but Harper’s self-declared financial expertise is a complete fabrication.  We had many of the same problems other countries did, we just swept them under the rug.

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