The C-38 Saga Continues

I spent the afternoon watching the debate on Bill C-38 on CPAC. Gawd, I want to grab some of those Conservative MPs and shake them until they get some sense.

Mario Silva of the Liberal Party asked Rob Moore of the Conservatives a very simple, straightforward question: if the bill to legalize same-sex marriage fails, do the Conservatives propose to revoke the marriage licenses of the some five thousand couples who have been married? The Conservative danced around the question but never answered it. Ten minutes later, Silva got a second chance at a question and pointed out that the Conservative hadn't answered. Again, he danced around the issue. I felt like screaming, "DON'T WAIT FOR THE TRANSLATION! ANSWER THE QUESTION!" That wouldn't quite have worked, though, as both MPs were Anglos...

(Actually, does anyone know if Silva himself is gay? He was sure setting off my gaydar... but he's not out, so far as I know.)

A few minutes later Jason Kenney of the Conservatives got up to speak... and speak... and speak... the man sure loves the sound of his own voice. I can't begin to count the number of factual inaccuracies in his speech, not to mention the number of false statistics he brought up. He kept talking about how the Conservatives are trying to protect marriage "for the sake of the children." Well, what about the children of gay couples? Don't they deserve to have their families protected under the law? Oops, I forgot... supposedly only hetero couples can have children, and therefore only heteros need protection. Oh, and then there was his whole willful misrepresentation of the clause protecting religious rights. Kenney seems to be completely ignorant of the allowances being made for religious institutions to see fit to perform or not to perform same-sex marriages as they see fit, according to their beliefs.

Now, I'm no fan of according special rights to religious institutions. (And yes, they are given special rights, starting with their exemption from taxation.) But neither am I willing to see someone else's Consitutional rights trampled in order to secure my own; a middle ground is available, and is, I believe, well accounted for in bill C-38.

I was rather impressed by Andrew Telegdi, the Liberal MP for Kitchener-Waterloo. He was the MP when I was a student at UW (I'd mistakenly remembered him as a much younger man - I wonder who I was thinking of?), so he's been around for quite a while. I'd also always thought that he was against gay marriage, but he spoke quite stirringly (and apparently off-the-cuff) in favour of the bill. He also corrected Kenney's statistics, pointing out that the percentage of people on both sides of the issue can be further broken down by age. When discussing social change, isn't it more important to consider younger demographics; not because older people and their opinions and experiences are less important to society, but because we're going to have to spend longer living in the society our Parliament is attempting to shape?

But nobody impressed me quite as much as Bill Graham, our Defense Minister. He gave an excellent speech as well, speaking of Pride as a celebration of diversity.

I was a little disappointed with Libby Davies; as one of the few openly gay Canadian MPs, I thought her statements were disjointed. She should have prepared her remarks rather than speaking off the cuff as she did. (Or if she did prepare, she should have prepared better.)

I can't remember now if it was Telegdi or Graham who said this, but there was something very apt brought out during the debate: many people in other minority communities realize that this is a fight not only for the gay community specifically, but for all minority rights. Because if this minority is prohibited from access to social institutions in their entirety, which minority will be targeted next as being undeserving? This is, in my opinion, why the Conservatives' attempts to turn immigrants against the gay community will ultimately fail.

When the transcript is made available, I'll try to post a link (or, at least, the relevant quotations). It looks like it'll likely be up tomorrow.


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lonely. Your problem is that Gregg shorthand
has been obsolete for a long time.


What obsolete skill are you?
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you are teal #008080

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