normanchateau

In the minds of religionists perhaps but their irrational fears are not a necessary nor sufficiently strong reason to exclude gay bashing from hate crimes legislation.

You raised the topic of whether the media should cover a topic relating to a minority group, i.e., gays, early in the campaign. I responded. Sorry that you didn't like my response, a portion of which asked the question of whether other minority group topics are also verboten by your standards. Should the media ONLY ask questions which are of interest to the majority?

Yes, Quebec wants to see the guilty punished but despite that, it looks like approximately three times as many people in Quebec will vote for Martin as for Harper. Despite adscam, they reject both Harper and his party. It will be difficult for Quebec to negotiate with someone like Harper who has so little support or credibility in that province.

I agree completely. That's why after C-250 was first tabled in the house, numerous amendments were inserted that were proposed by a wide cross-section of religious groups. The Liberals, NDP and BQ would not have unanimously passed C-250 had those amendments not been added.

So you blame the media for bringing up a topic which is relevant only to a minority? Are you saying that the media should only bring up topics relevant to the majority? Are you aware that today three CPC candidates in British Columbia, Reid, Wong and Cummins, broke with Harper on his position about financial compensation for the Chinese community. They want Harper to give more money than the Liberals have to the Chinese community for past injustices. The Chinese, like gays and lesbians, are a minority. Should the media bring up this story or should they ignore it?

Differ from Harper in that you believe there should be no hate laws or differ from Harper in that you believe that sexual orientation should be included in hate crimes legislation?

Who's they?

Only if the moderator's definition of a troll is someone who is not a CPC supporter. Greg seems objective to me.

Yeah, why would any political party care about minorities?

Funny how you fail to acknowledge that Stephen Harper favours hate laws EXCEPT when they include gays and lesbians. But then it's not surprising given that he had no problem making a homophobic comment about Svend Robinson in the House of Commons. To his credit, Harper subsequently apologized.

It's not over yet if Harper is elected. Didn't he promise to create a new bureaucracy, the Office of the Independent Special Prosector to decide on criminal prosecutions of those involved in adscam? Here's what he was quoted as saying in the Vancouver Sun, December 1, 2005: "The independent director of public prosecutions will decide on prosecutions arising from the sponsorship scandal." Now there's a great way to spend even more of our tax dollars and infringe on provincial jurisdiction. Peter MacKay then contradicted what Harper had said. Furthermore, according to the Vancouver Sun, Harper's plan was condemned in Quebec because it would have the federal government infringing on areas of provincial jurisdiction. Quebec's attorney journal is pursuing criminal charges against the main adscam characters and it's not clear what Harper's Special Prosecutor would do other than suck up more dollars. No surprise that MacKay contradicted Harper's ill-conceived plan. Confusion and disarray in CPC. No wonder CPC is not seen as a government-in-waiting by most Canadians.

Sure, the parents can quit work and stay home all day with the child. Great idea.

Stephen Harper couldn't have said it better.

It makes no difference to me but Harper apparently has a problem with minority rights with respect to this particular population.

BHS You have provided strong arguments as to why we should not have any crimes legislation in Canada. You might want to inform Stephen Harper of your arguments. He has no problem with hate crimes legislation as long as it's based on criteria such as race, religion, ethnicity, gender, disability, etc., ad nauseam. He ONLY has a problem with the inclusion of sexual orientation in hate crimes legislation. That's why he voted against C-250. If Stephen Harper had merely argued that he opposed all hate crimes legislation, he might not today be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as homophobic. Merely opposing C-38 can be rationalized by Canadians as support for traditional marriage but opposing C-250 cannot.

Of course Harper saying publicly this weekend that he'll not reintroduce the marijuana decriminalization legislation, i.e., supporting throwing people in jail for possession, is not exactly a vote getter among nonCPC supporters, especially the younger ones. His plan to re-visit same sex marriage is not only not a vote getter but alienates large numbers of Canadians, even those who aren't gay or lesbian. Although Ontario is nott as socially liberal as Quebec or British Columbia, neither is it as socially conservative as Alberta. Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal all have huge gay and lesbian communities and it's inconceivable to me that Harper will win a single seat in Canada's three largest cities. CPC needs a more effective leader, perhaps a populist like John Diefenbaker who was able to win 50 seats in Quebec. And his vote to exclude sexual orientation from hate crimes legislation won't yield a lot of votes from gays, lesbians, transsexuals, bisexuals or anyone else sexually atypical.

Not likely that Goodale will be gone. The 12/03/05 Ekos poll for Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined (I don't know how it breaks down further between the two provinces) shows Liberal support at 34%, NDP support at 34%, CPC at 27% and Green at 4%. Not a big surprise in provinces with NDP governments although I had anticipated CPC would do better. But there's still at least 6 weeks to go and miracles do sometimes happen although they're statistically improbable.

Depends on whether you view attaching importance in your personal life to religion as being positive or negative. I suspect only those who do would view my comments as negative. The link was to a December, 2002 survey.

Click on the link I provided for the Calgary study and you'll find exactly how that was defined. But here's a very simplified answer if you prefer. When asked the question "Are you homosexual?", 2% might say yes. When asked the question "Have you ever engaged in homosexual behavior?", 15% might say yes. The 15% would include bisexuals who are homosexual to some degree as well as heterosexuals who are homosexual or have been homosexual in their behaviour to some degree. Unless one uses an extremely narrow definition of homosexuality, Harper has unequivocally and irreversibly offended a very significant percentage of the Canadian population by: (1) promising to revisit the same sex marriage issue (2) voting to exclude sexual orientation from hate crimes legislation (3) making a homophobic comment about Svend Robinson in the House of Commons

Yes that's been the pattern in the past but religious people believe in miracles.

Perhaps but my money's on Stephen Harper.

They didn't do the study in Calgary. According to one study performed by researchers at the University of Calgary, 15.3% of men aged 18-27 in Calgary reported being homosexual to some degree. Link: http://www.youth-suicide.com/gay-bisexual/homodemo.htm My point here is not that there's something unique about Calgary but rather that the 1% cited in the first post is absurdly low. Far higher numbers have been published in numerous other studies. Here's an article which deals with the issue, cites some of those numbers and points out why consistent figures aren't reported: http://www.plu.sg/main/facts_05.htm

Almost as communist as having Canada's physicians on government payrolls, another socialist plot hatched by commie Tommy Douglas who cleverly disguised himself as a Baptist preacher to fool gullible Canadians. But it's no surprise that Martin of all people would propose this. What better way for a lurking-under-the bed communist to pull the wool over gullible Canadians than to disguise himself even more cleverly as a multimillionaire, wealthy capitalist shipping magnate. And it's no surprise that even Stephen Harper is now promising to throw away at least ten billion dollars of Canadian taxpayers' hard-earned money for childcare. Another left wing plot, this one perpetrated by someone cleverly disguised as an inept politician.

Might even get 30% <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Obviously you have not read Post #4 - those were Canadian stats about Canadians. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And the Pew Research Centre also collected stats about Canadians.

Times do indeed change. But does Harper?