Zeitgeist

It’s already happening for all ages. It’s in Disney kids’ films. If you’re asking if I think that’s good, my answer is that the depictions shouldn’t be sexualized for kids. The representation is disproportionately high for LGBTQ.

Get real. Most media advertising has disproportionately high LGBTQ content.

Teach them what at what age? You ranted on here about your own confused family and friends, threw up your hands and said, but that’s just how it is. What you don’t seem to get is that most parents want to raise their boys to be boys and their girls to be girls, with good examples of each. If their kids really felt like another gender and this feeling persisted, they would seek help. It probably wouldn’t be surgery at a young age. Most parents want to see their family prosper down the generations. They hope for grandchildren eventually. If their kids presented same sex orientation, they would adjust and support, though some would have a harder time doing this than others. What many parents don’t want is an advertisement of alternative gender expressions and orientations for children. It looks like an agenda, maybe because it is. The publicly-funded school boards are caving into the voices of the ideologues who drafted policies without public input at a time before the impacts of these policies were felt. Now the public can feel the impacts and they’re divisive.

There was no Russian collusion. Total bullshit that’s all been debunked. I wasn’t a Trump fan but even most Democrats now acknowledge that the Russia collusion story was false.

Yes I’d like to think enough people would understand that by now, but they should’ve seen this over a year ago. That Singh thinks the public will forget these major issues tells you he’s made a calculation that he can get away with continuing to support the government while pretending to care about China’s infiltration.

The population doesn’t care anymore that their own government are traitors. The population doesn’t understand or care about politics, just hairdos and Tic Toc dancing cats. China and Russia know this. Our population is totally destabilized and indoctrinated to accept whatever they’re told. Trudeau or a Trudeau by another name will get re-elected even if the government starts slaughtering people in the streets to protect trans rights. There’s no opposition because Canadians are taught that questioning is racist-colonial-misogynist-fringe. Besides, thinking too much and saying too much of what you think gets you in trouble. The country’s a basket case.

Nice try inserting “hate.” My faith teaches that all people are created in God’s image. Gay and trans people are just as loved as sis gender and heterosexual people. The issue is behaviour. Catholicism teaches that sex is a creative act open to creating children and is only permitted in marriage. Sex only for pleasure’s sake isn’t supported. It’s why priests must be chaste and why gay marriage isn’t allowed in the Church. Outside of marriage Catholics are required to be chaste. Of course many Catholics have sex outside marriage, which is considered sinful. In Christianity everyone is a sinner. We strive to be Christ-like and sin no more. We ask for forgiveness when we make mistakes, and God forgives. What Catholics are reminded is that we love the sinner but not the sin. If we start promoting sinful behaviour, we are no longer promoting Catholic values. Christ is the opposite of hate. I understand that you don’t believe that as an atheist, but respect my right to my religious beliefs, as I respect your right to your beliefs. There are many rights to consider, and sometimes there will be incompatibility, which is why we find creative solutions like single-person washrooms. Don’t expect everyone to agree with the presumptions behind the Pride flag. Don’t expect everyone to buy into your disparagement of people who disagree with you.

This is the problem in Canada: There’s only one officially permitted view, the federal Liberal one, even in Conservative provinces. Most Canadians don’t agree with that view, but they’re scared to say so out loud. Remarks that leak out among trusted colleagues are self-censored as micro-aggressions. Watch your local CBC news to listen to the perspective you’re supposed to have but don’t actually believe.

I think you’re picking the wrong cause by going after Catholics if defending Christianity is your aim. People from all denominations, all religions, all atheist belief systems, and all political ideologies have committed sins, broken laws, and done bad stuff. Yes some more than others and all is up for debate. I would worry less about the finer points of your particular religion’s theology than the ability to practice and express your beliefs in this climate of compelled speech, censorship, and cancellation.

The director is an activist who puts equity quotas above merit. The programs are in decline.

The answer to the question is that Singh wants to keep as many seats and as much power as possible. Everything he says to indicate otherwise is bullshit and anyone with half a brain knows this.

I like RFK’s questioning of vaccines, especially for Covid at this stage of the game. Finally someone with the balls to stand up to big pharma. Biden is beyond compromised, beholden to the far left, a war mongerer, and lapsing into senility. Trump is reviled by half the country, though he’d probably beat Biden. RFK is the only viable alternative to Trump. DeSantis would be great but Trump will win this nomination. The Democrats are shooting themselves in the feet pushing through Biden.

Exactly. If I decide to be Shirley for this week and someone calls me by my male “dead name”, a law is broken, and if I as Shirley decide for a lark to take my time looking around the women’s changeroom at the gym, junk hanging out. Maybe I enter a women’s running race, collect a medal. All that is fine and don’t forget to call me Shirley.

You know how to tug at the heartstrings, and of course I love all that stuff, but I’m not sure that Canada exists for most of the current electorate. The Liberals have replaced those narratives with a highly charged divisive story about Canada as colonial and racist regime. It doesn’t matter that slavery was almost non-existent before Confederation and banned from the beginning of Confederation. It doesn’t matter that progressives pushed for education for Indigenous and not a single student’s body has been exhumed at a residential school. It doesn’t matter that Canada was more accepting of immigrant and Indigenous cultures than just about any country. The story now is of national shame and pitting races/groups against each other as oppressors and victims based on group identity rather than the acts of individuals. Canadians have been taught these stories for several years now and it’s in the curriculum. One cannot merely accept the variety of cultures today. One must promote certain groups. 2SLGBTQ flags must go up but not the Star of David. Some flags but not others. The Canadian flag used to be enough. Being Canadian isn’t enough anymore to make you acceptable.

But I’m still not sure enough Canadians are alert to what’s unfolded. I used to think Americans were more inward looking and ignorant of the outside world, more ignorant in general than Canadians. We brag about our more educated population, but what if the education system has gotten more into the business of indoctrination than educating students to be more literate, better at math, etc.? What happens when much more of the school day consists of talking about how bad the country was in the past (when it was really better than most countries) and kids are sitting in circles talking about their identities, levels of privilege, and other clearly ideological content? I venture to say that eventually you get unquestioning citizens. Sprinkle in compelled speech legislation and other rules in the name of “equity, diversity, inclusion” and you get a strange new brew: woke authoritarianism. Don’t forget to add climate fear for good measure, as fear works wonders for indoctrination. Just think of Covid.

Yes Canada is a Balkanized mess, not just by region but by ideology, but the country has shifted much further left and more authoritarian than it’s ever been. Our government persists by taking on more debt to buy votes with spending programs and uses legislation and claims of national security to silence critics and justify secrecy. It’s old time Soviet with a creepy anti-science, anti-family destabilizing push for alternative gender exploration, state-assisted suicide, and provision of hard drugs as a solution to inadequate healthcare. Question it and risk being called racist-misogynist-fringe. Our government gaslights reasonable people who see the odd attention this government gives to identity politics as it brushes major concerns like foreign undermining of our democracy under the carpet. Most Canadians aren’t impressed by a PM who lectures other heads of state about not being 2SLGBTQ+ enough while deflecting responsibility for scandals at home. People across North America are also questioning the costly distraction of war in Ukraine. They may be wondering if culturally Russia is so much less aligned morally with their values than politicians like Trudeau. Perhaps Trudeau is more anti-democratic than they thought. Perhaps his government is pushing beliefs that they find undermining as parents, men, and women.

It’s incredible the amount of willful blindness. I think it’s cognitive dissonance. People can’t accept that their rights are eroding in Canada. Canada has changed for the worse.

Too many examples have been presented on here to excuse dismissal.

If the self-preserving Liberal-Dem government continues to stonewall, and the appointed rapporteur continues to stonewall, maybe the Government General can dissolve Parliament. Oh wait, she was appointed by Trudeau too. Also, I think she’s busy finding the highest price catering and clothes lines for her play monarchy. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-if-parliament-has-no-confidence-in-johnston-how-long-can-it-have/

We’re witnessing concept creep where language that is not violence is being called violence. Being offended is now grounds for censorship. Speech is not a form of violence. Being offended is not a reason to censor speech, because as we’ve established, people have very different thresholds for what is offensive and we don’t have a constitutional right not to be offended. We are supposed to have free speech. Lose free speech and you lose democracy. Canada is becoming a second rate democracy because of the increasing totalitarian control over speech. Courts in Canada are compelling speech. Experimental gender expression has been declared a human right worthy of trouncing on fundamental longstanding rights such as women’s rights, religious rights, and free speech. Basically language in Canada is being forced to conform with a narrow political perspective on the left, so much so that now all organizations, government institutions, and businesses in Canada are self-censoring for fear of cancellation. We have no First Amendment in Canada and we’re paying the price. Canada is no longer a free-thinking society of healthy debate and pluralism. It is a de facto one party system where certain ways of thinking that have no scientific basis are being treated as Truth.

People have no right to destroy private property like that.

You can’t define for everyone what might be objectionable in the flag, nor can you assume that such objections are bad. You’re entitled to your opinion. There are reasonable grounds for questioning. Writing off everyone who doesn’t agree with your opinion as bigoted or morally suspect will only invite the same assessment of your opinion.

Again, assumptions. Also, do you think DeSantis is bad for leaving sex education out of early elementary grades? You assume that you’re talking to an audience that agrees with all your personal assumptions. Some people love DeSantis and it’s likely that the next president will be Republican, so either Trump or DeSantis. Are half of Americans bigots? A lot is packed into that flag and not everyone agrees that advertising a selection of identities and orientations aligns with their values. Messaging of acceptance and support without regard to sexual orientation and identity can be conveyed in many ways without a flag. The reality is that if you push people to support more than what their consciences or faiths or values can accept, then you will get a pushback that could actually erode or remove rights if it’s arguable that the exercising of certain rights tramples other rights. Legislation is created by elected legislators. Public opinion can shift. My opinion has shifted since I began to see the fallout of transition surgeries for kids, the ensuing mental health problems, the psychogenic epidemic of female transitions resulting in sterilizations, mastectomies, etc. I won’t even get into questions of whether there are 90 genders or 150. This change is benefiting and being pushed by health and pharmaceutical corporations, which creates a moral hazard. Already progressive Sweden has banned transition surgeries for kids and Britain has closed a clinic due to lawsuits and fallout. Reasonable people have reasons to question what is being taught and advertised, especially in public education, especially for young children.

So not hanging a Pride flag makes one a bigot? Your position is radical and illustrates why many reasonable people are questioning stances like yours.

No, you’re making assumptions and not respecting the range of perspectives on a symbol that people have defensible reasons not to want front and centre on public schools that their children are required to attend.