normanchateau

What problem?

Good point Sparhawk but the court put the religious freedom of KofC to discriminate ahead of the rights of the lesbians. That was the intent of the Liberal/NDP/BQ amendments to C-250 and show that they're working. Despite that, Harper and his party voted against C-250 which suggests that perhaps their "religious freedom" rationale for opposing C-250 is entirely bogus and was designed to conceal other motives.

And during the last election, Harper was busy flipflopping on health care and now no one, perhaps not even himself, knows where he stands: http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050430091919834

Did they work? Two women won a law suit against the Knights of Columbus this week after their wedding plans were canceled due to religous reasons. These women when booking would have know that the KofC would not support same sex marriages in there facilities. This is a slipery slop and the case law will now build in the favour of "human rights" and not religous freedom. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Here's the rest of the story, i.e., the part you omitted. The Knights of Columbus originally agreed to allow them to marry so the women printed invitations and incurred other costs based on the assumprtion that the wedding would occur that day. When they were subsequently told they couldn't marry there, they sued to recover their costs. The court upheld the religious rights of the Knights of Columbus but asked them to reimburse the women's costs. The women, by the way, had no idea that the Knights of Columbus was a religious organization. They even acknowledged that they never would have booked the hall had they know the Knights were a religious group.

As long as Harper remains leader, even Martin dying would not play into CPC hands.

Starting a campaign by letting Canadians know that you'll be looking at the possibility of facilitating the removal of legal rights from gay men is really a poor start. No wonder he's in fourth place now in Quebec. Not only is the BQ outraged by this but so I imagine are most Quebecers, the majority of whom favour SSM. And I wonder how the leader of the PQ feels knowing that the leader of the Oppicial Opposition is campaigning to take awasy his legal rights. If Harper had a bit more common sense, he'd dump this issue...permanently. It's a no-win proposition. He's already flipflopped repeatedly on health care, demonstrating that consistency is not his strength. To make this issue the one on which he's inflexible is not a good start.

I didn't chose to make this part of my election platform. Incredulously, Harper did. Harper and CPC chose to get hung up on this word.

Your not so subtle implication is that we should vote for the more youthful Stephen Harper. Martin has looked that way for years. It's performance that counts and you might want to look at the performance of the two leaders the day before the 2004 election. Martin campaigned from the Maritimes to the west coast of British Columbia that day, stopping in numerous communities enroute. Harper stayed home the day before the election. Bet Harper doesn't repeat that mistake this time. Martin got the publicity and got across to people just how much energy he had (despite still wearing that tired dog face that he's been genetically stuck with for years).

In fact the Liberals/NDP/BQ put in a series of amendments to C-250 for that very reason. Harper still voted against it. The amendments obviously worked.

You just don't get it. If I were to take away your right to marry and call that a "compromise", you'd be outraged. Yet you have no problem with someone like Harper campaigning to take away the rights of an entire group to marry. This is the 21st century. We no longer view it as important for politicians to take away rights from minority groups. There was a time when politicians were keen to deny equal rights to Asians, Jews, women, and so on. This is not that time. If Harper were to shelve the C-38 issue, would social and religious conservatives not vote for him? Of course they would still vote for him(given the alternatives). So given that Harper persists despite that suggests that it's really important to him to take away their legal right to marry. He's not just doing it to get votes. You don't think that's scary in a man who hopes to become Prime Minister of Canada?

I stand by my statement that most Canadians do not have a problem with C-250, the legislation that added sexual orientation to hate crimes legislation. I suspect even Harper knows he's in the political wilderness on this one. Perhaps that's why he plans to revisit C-38 but not C-250. But the fact that Harper and his party opposed C-250 shows just how completely out of touch they are with the average Canadian. Why did Harper oppose C-250? Was it for religious reasons? If it wasn't for religious reasons, what were the reasons?

I haven't seen anyone attack Harper's plan on this thread. Rather it's been pointed out repeatedly that Harper has flipflopped repeatedly on health care for purposes of political expediency. He no longer has the credibility to convince people that he wouldn't continue to flipflop like a fish. His plan has changed so often that no one, not even Preston Manning, knows where he now stands. That was the point of the link I provided above...his attack on Preston Manning's health care plan.

Leafless, why are you making this out to be a Christian issue? Religious conservatives of most religions oppose lesbians marrying. In fact conservative religious Sikhs are even more opposed to this than Christians. To me, Harper represents social and religious conservatives rather than Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. A referendum on minority rights makes no sense to me. If a majority decides to take away the rights of a minority, does that make it right? Lesbians now have the right to marry. If a majority of heterosexuals feel otherwise, that's hardly a reason to strip away that right.

Sigh, I'll answer once again since you refuse to acknowledge the previous responses. Go to www.valleysceptic.com and look at the article on the Conservative Party Hijacked by Religious Zealots. Those are the people I'm referring to.

Good question Argus. I didn't know the answer so I did a search online to see which ones voted for or against C-38. Here are the ones who voted for it: Navdeep Bains, Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal MP Here are the ones who voted against it: Gurmant Grewal, CPC MP Nina Grewal, CPC MP Rahim Jaffer, CPC MP Wajid Khan, Liberal MP Gurbax Malhi, Liberal MP Deepak Obhrai, CPC MP Assuming I didn't forget any MPs, it looks like 6 out of 10 voted against same sex marriage, suggesting that these religious groups are more opposed to C-38 than the average MP. One obvious conclusion from this is that religious conservatives be they Sikh or Christian are more likely to oppose C-38, not exactly a big surprise. Another conclusion from the above results is that people tended to vote along party lines. This was especially true of the NDP and CPC. Only three CPC MPs, Gerald Keddy, James Moore and Jim Prentice voted for C-38. By contrast, a larger number of Liberal and BQ MPs did not vote with their party.

Love these comments. Good thing the CPC does not appoint judges since such CPC judges wouldn't be hindered or shackled by technicalities like evidence. Evidence...who needs evidence when one already knows who's guilty? Let's hope you're never charged with a crime then found guilty by a CPC jury who did not base their opinion on legal evidence. Convicted of complicity? What a joke. Are you saying that every Liberal MP in British Columbia is guilty of complicity? What a hoot. How about those who voted Liberal in Quebec? Is a Liberal voter in Quebec more complicit than a British Columbia Liberal MP? By your logic, yes. The "Liberal corruption" mantra is yet another feeble attempt to distract Canadian voters from the fact that Stephen Harper is leader of the Conservatives.

Are you saying that CPC has no more religious conservatives than any other Canadian political party? Are you saying that CPC does not have an anti-gay bias? Are you saying that Harper's vote and his party's vote against including sexual orientation in hate crimes legislation was not motivated by religious conservatism? If it wasn't motivated by his religious views and it wasn't motivated by an anti-gay bias, what was it motivated by? A toss of the dice? Pure chance?

Nobody knows that someone will change his mind in the future but past behaviour is a reasonable predictor of future behaviour and Harper has flipflopped before on health care as my link above clearly indicates. Why should we assume that despite his previous flipflops on healthcare and even his attacks on Preston Manning's and Mike Harris' proposals for health care which mirrored Harper's previous positions on health care, that this time, just weeks before the 2006 election, he now finally has a chipped-in-stone position? He's not been consistent before. That's why you failed to respond to that part of my post.

Nobody knows that someone will change his mind in the future but past behaviour is a reasonable predictor of future behaviour and Harper has flipflopped before on health care as my link above clearly indicates. Why should we assume that despite his previous flipflops on healthcare and even his attacks on Preston Manning's and Mike Harris' proposals for health care which mirrored Harper's previous positions on health care, that this time, just weeks before the 2006 election, he now finally has a chipped-in-stone position? He's not been consistent before. That's why you failed to respond to that part of my post.

Not to mention the bizarre obsession with hijacking everything into an SSM rant. This is getting totally annoying, and is off topic, so maybe pointing out the forum rules would do. You chose to focus on my one sentence about Harper taking away legal rights rather than the rest of my post which dealt exclusively with Harper's shifting position on health care. Nowhere did you even acknowledge what appeared in the link I posted where Harper said he'd changed his position for political reasons. Harper's credibility on health care and flipfloping is the main issue I addressed.

In other words, Charles Adler is OK with gays being "under the marriage tent." So are most Canadians. But Stephen Harper is not. And I for one agree with Charles Adler that not all opponents of gay marriage are homophobes. Most I'm sure are not. To me, what is far worse than opposing gay marriage is opposing even including sexual orientation in hate crimes legislation. Most Canadians would not, I expect, have a problem with that since it would stiffen the penalties for physical gay bashing. But Stephen Harper did oppose C-250 which passed anyway thanks to the Liberals, NDP and BQ. Harper's opposition to C-250 suggests his social intolerance extends beyond merely opposing gay marriage.

Here's another speculation. If Rick Mercer were to become CPC leader, he'd win a majority government. Then again, no matter who replaces Harper after the next election, as long as that person is not another social conservative, stands a good shot at a majority government. Most Canadians could have told us this after the 2004 election but CPC supporters are not most Canadians. Even left wing parties like the NDP annd BQ will, between them, pick up more of the popular vote than the unpopular CPC.

Why would anyone believe Harper's current position on health care more than his previous position on health care? It's changed so many times that he's completely lost credibility on the issue. Just prior to the last election, he changed his position once again and even acknowledged that his new and improved position was solely for the purpose of getting elected in 2004 or as he so disingenuously put it, political realism demanded it. Here's the full link: http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050430091919834 So what will Harper do about health care if he's elected? It depends on whether we believe what he said when he was a Reform Party MP, or Director of the National Citizens' Coalition, or leader of the Alliance Party, or leader of CPC or leader of CPC responding at the last moment to "political realism". Who knows, maybe CPC supporters even view his flipflops as a virtue as they seem to view most of his weaknesses, including his bizarre obsession with taking away legal rights from a minority group.

If it's not a human right, why then don't we take away the legal right to marry from all Canadians? Or how about if we just take that right away from you? Or better still, since some religious conservatives view procreation as one function of marriage, why not take away this nonhuman right from those incapable of procreation? For Harper to campaign on taking away legally granted rights (be they human or nonhuman) from one minority group guarantees that he'll never be Prime Minister. Even Ralph Klein acknowledges that Harper is unelectable.

Clever of Rick Mercer to say appealing things to CPC supporters. Is it because he wants to appear objective and nonpartisan, attacking all four party leaders as he did on his television show this past week? Or is it because after the January election is blown once again by Stephen Harper, Rick Mercer will seek the Conservative leadership? Here's a link speculating on Mercer's plans many months ago to seek the CPC leadership: http://www.liberalunderground.ca/mercer_leader_062705.php