Black Dog

I won't disagree, but I do think you're countering your own point here. You're right in that the neocons (for lack of a better term) don't show their real agenda to American voters. But how do they market themselves? As the party of God, guns, and (anti) gays. Social issues take up a disproportinate amount of space on the U.S. conservative agenda: economics are secondary. Given the amount of success they've had with this approach (and with the "war on terror"), they are obviously resonating with a significant chunk of the U.S. population. Now, a party that tried the same approach here wouldn't get within sniffing distance of Parliment, which is why our Cons are trying like hell to moderate themselves. And look: it worked.

While the powers that be over here keep the attention on the radicals to keep out focus off them. Neat trick.

Right, just like they "deal" with frequent resolution-violater Israel. When people say the UN is irrelevant, they are right, even though the people who usually say such things are wrong about why that is.

Paging Dr, Freud...

I still don't think you're changing anything. People currently get married for a variety of reasons, and those reasons differ between couples. In other words, people already define marriage according to their own personal beliefs. Hell, that's why some people get maried in a church or a temple while others go to city hall, while others don't even bother with legal recognition at all, yet still consider themselves married. So I'm not sure how getting government out of the equation would change the way people look at marriage or their relationships. But at least, by retaining the status quo, we keep another option open (not to mention save a lot of hassle re-writing laws and such.)

Why do knuckle dragging homophobes spend more time thinking about gay sex than even gay people do?

They already do.

"Conservative" is a broad term and, as you imply, covers a lot of differnt factions from economic libertarians to religious extremists and everyone in between. I've tried to narrow down who it is I'm talking about when I use the term conservative here, but obviously labels have limitations. But I happen to believe that American conservatives are far more factionalized than there Canadian counterparts and that the strength of those factions tilt the movement far further to the right than Canada's Cons. (Also: I suspect we're working on different terminologies here. I'm not sure what you mean by "neocon".)

The only problem is some people are claiming exclusive ownership of the the term marriage and taking issue with the legal usage. Which I could accept if y'all hadn't been completely mum on the issue of government defining marriage until they decided to let the queers in on the act, which makes it look like the beef isn't really with the government co-opting religious terminology at all. No, I don't see why we should go through the fuss of creating "civil unions" (thus denying both gays and non-religious heterosexuals the privilege of calling their unions a marriage) and "religious marriage" when that's pretty much exactly the situation we have now.

Because allowing heterosexuals a state-issued marriage licnse while refusing teh same to homosexuals is discriminatory. Canada doesn't have a formal separation of church and state. Religious definitions and civil (legal) terms are apples and oranges. People keep equating the two, but they are not the same at all, something recognized in the provisions in the Equal Marriage Act that allow religious institutions to define marriage on their own terms. The precedent has already been set. State unions=marriages. If you have issues with the semantics, well, that's unfortunate, but I fail to see why you can't just render unto Caesar what is Caesar's etc. But suppose you have a case where you have a polygamous or polyandrous relationship where all the participants are consenting adults? Quite frankly, I doubt there's a lot of gays who give a rat's ass about getting "validation" from homophobic institutions like the R.C. Church. The point here is equal treatment under the law.

I wouldn't count Bush among the neocons. The Bush administration is full of them, sure, but Bush himself has never struck me as an idealogue. No matter what role he's played, eitehr as a private citizen or in politics, he's never been anything more than a dillentente. However, it certainly seems like he's inspired a almost cult-like devotion among rank and file conservatives, not the conservative intelligensia, but the average Republican voter and the hard right social conservative base. I think after 9-11, right-leaning people gravitated to the idea of a strong father figure, a mantle Bush assumed by defaulty (by virture of his position as oppossed to his actual deeds). The lustre may have gone off a bit among moderates and"ideas" people, but the level of personal fealty to the man remains high. I mean: can you think of a president in the last 50 years that has inspuired the amount of personal devotion Bush has? Well, I'm, talking about U.S. conservatives, which make our Cons look like Maoists.

Given the fact that the same voters who you claim put Stronach in as a Conservative to oust the Liberals sent her back to Ottawa as a Liberal would indicate the people were more forgiving than you say. But at least they had a chance to pass judgement on Stronach's decision: the voters of Vancouver Kingsway are going to have to sit and wait while Emerson gets to hang on until the Harper government falls. Because its reasonable to assume that, government or not, the vast majority of voters in his riding did not want to be represented by a Conservative, hence that party's distant third-place showing. Certainly: he will continue to stand for his MP's salary, his government expense account and his chauffer service. Irrelevant. The people voted for David Emerson, Liberal, government or no government. A lack of representation in a new government is a risk one undertakes everytime one casts a ballot. Hell, thousands of people cast votes for candidates they know had no chance of winning, yet did so out of principle, something you and Emerson clearly know nothing about.

Which is why the BC Human Rioghts tribunal ruled they had the right to refuse to rent to teh couple in question. Get your facts "straight". Gee, someone should tell some of the religious groups that endorse gay marriage (including Canada's largest Protestant denomonation, the United Church). Also: are heterosexual marriages unsanctified by religion also meaningless? Personally, as an atheist, I think the recongnition of the legality of my union is far more more meaningful than the blessing of some imaginary sky pixie.

This is worth a look and a giggle. Ruber Stamping Our Rights The gag is the same types championing Bush's warrantless spying were, just a few years a go, a -twitter over Clinton's "rubber-stamp" warrant-based FISA eavesdropping. Which leaves me wondering: does the modern, mainstream conservative movement have any central alues beyond obediance to Bush? How did it devolve into a personality cult?

Irshad Manji? Yech.

Funny: you've come along way since last May when you said Stronach "betray(ed) her party and those people who voted for her." Oh and that "(a)nyone who sells themselves, throws away the principals they said they believed in, in exchange for some kind of personal gain can be termed a whore. And is." Mmmmmmm. Hypocricy. (Oh and just so you know I'm not making it up, it's all here.) Also: I came across some figures attributed to the Canadian Election Study (which examines voter behaviour) which indicate that a large majority of voters place their votes based on the party. Preference for the local candidate is a distant third. Perhaps that's shameful, but that's the reality (it's also understandable, given the prominence of party leadership during elections).

Anyone bother checking out the B.C. tribunals decision? They ruled the KoC had the right to refuse to rent the hall, but that the manner in which they refused (after they had already agreed to rent to the couple) constituted discrimination. In other words, if they had said up front: "Sorry, we're Catholic, no lesbian weddings allowed," there would not have neen a problem. For their part, the couple in question claim they were unaware of the KoC's affiliation with the Caholic Church and, had they known about it, they wouldn't have approached the organization.

That's a bit of a non sequitur. Certainly Canada has blood on its hands (its support of the last Haitian coup is but one example). But I'm not really sure how that's germane to this subject.

That's still a cop out. I have a hard time believeing that the cultural differences between Persians and Arabs or what have you doesn't inform any of their actions with respect to Islam. I'm not so sure about that. One of the big issues with Islam is the lack of a central authority makes it very difficult to get a comprehensive picture: there's so many different viewpoints and, in a religion with over a billion adherents and a variety of different sects, it's impossible to say "no one said X". Moderate voices seldom get much airtime. Again: I don't buy it. Take Syria for example: I find it quite doubtful that the secular Arab nationalist Baath regime would whip up any religious sentiment, given the danger radical Islam poses to such regimes.

No it's not a starwman. If anything the raging hypocricy is from moronic right wingers like you who faint whenever a Democrat does soemthing you decree undecorous, even as you champion mouth breathers like Ann Coulter, Dick "GFY" Cheney, etc etc. In short: Republicans set the bar for sleaze, but you lap it up like its bad chocolate. Hmm. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King spent their lives fighting poverty, racial injustice and war. They lived and breathed politics, and in the former's case, died because of them. So for mincing little pricks like you to declare that the event celebrating the life's work of one of these political activists should be free of politics (not to mention the titanic arrogance of presuming that you know civility from a hole in the ground) is ridiculous. The fact that it comes from a political party known for tarring its opponnents with every imaginable smear renders their sudden outrage an air of comic stupidity.

That's an excellent point, 'hawk. If abortion is murder, it's murder regardless of the means of conception. I don't care if a woman gets one, two or 45 abortions. I'm not interested in regulating other people's reproductive choices.

What terrorists? What line is thta? More to the point: what fucking business is it of anyone if soemone's funeral is turned into a political rally, especially if that person was, ah, political? Where do the Republicans get off dictating what's proper? Who appointed the conservative punditocracy Miss Manners?

How about Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Uzbekistan (who's president shoots unarmed protesters and bolis dissidents alive and was, until very recently, a recipient of millions of dollars of U.S. aid and military assitsance and a host of a important U.S. military base). Egypt. Kuwait. Colombia. Haiti. There's probably more, but I think that proves my point. You're pretty selective wih your context. Prior to 1991, Iraq wasn't much of a destablizing force. the Iran Iraq war was a blunder (spurred on by the U.S., who sought to destabalize the Iranian regime). The subsequent invasion of Kuwait occurred within the context of the Iran Iraq conflict. So really, in 25 years, Iraq invaded two countries, which is as many as Reagan. Instability in Iraq Threatens the whole region. If a full scale civil war broke out, you'd see Turkey, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia embroiled in short order. Instability, political and military strife is far harder to control and contain than the rigid structur eof Saddam's dictatorship.

Well, that's not the issue. Some homosexuals really want to be with women: they're called "lesbians".

"Ah do declah, these heah Dehm-o-crats are such beastly creetchas. It's just so unseemly the way these culluhed folk behave at their funerahls, all dancin' and talkin' poltics, insteada demurely sippin' mint juleps on the verhandah."