DAC

I think you mean 'profitable', not 'moral'. No, I meant moral - although it may be profitable too. Thelonious, why would you undertake a task if the effort exerted was greater than the benefit received? To my mind, that's foolish and, let me say, immoral. [Why immoral? Well, in purely practical terms, some good could have been done if your efforts had been otherwise employed. That good is now lost.] As to profitability, forget about money and think in terms of how you spend your time. Do you not choose to spend it in a way that makes you happiest (or will make you happiest) given the choices available? Let’s try a case. At 11:30 at night, I was about to climb into bed after a long day’s work, and a friend called me to talk about her problems. For three hours she talked about her problems. She was not willing to hear any advice or accept any help. She just wanted me to know how badly she hurts. She got no benefit from it. Rehashing the problems without any answers just digs them deeper into her mind, makes the ruts deeper and more painful. I certainly got no benefit from it! By your definition it was immoral for me to listen to her.... The cost was far greater than the benefit. Do you really want to maintain that? And it certainly did not make either my friend or myself happy! It seems rather obvious to me that cost benefit analysis or pragmatism simply don’t cover the territory of morality and ethics, except in very limited cases.

FWIW, the only Christian “courts” I know of in Canada are Church Courts in the sense that they deal strictly with issues of church rules between church members. Usually they are the governing bodies of the various churches, acting in a judicial rôle. They might be called upon to act as arbitrators in other matters by people who have seen them as wise judges, but their mandate is internal, not external. Civil law has nothing to do with their decisions. Of interest to some, I heard from one church historian that the traditional clerical robes which still maintained in some traditions had their origins in the Roman Civil Courts. At some point after Constantine, most people were going to the church courts to resolve their problems because they were visibly so much better than the civil courts. Apparently the Caesar of the time recognized that and appointed all bishops as civil judges.

For a start, I think you will find that off-shore royalties go to the provincial governments. Nova Scotia’s upset (it’s where I live now) is that the benefits then get clawed back by the feds through reduced equalization payments. But think through the whole issue. It everything like that goes to the feds, then the benefits of the power projects in northern Quebec should also go to the feds; stump age fees on trees cut should go to the feds ... Where is there any natural place to draw a line? A big part of our present political problems lies in the fact that the feds have the money, and the provinces are responsible for the expensive work – health care, education, welfare ... Transferring more resources to the feds just makes it worse.

Sweal, I think this admirably expresses your logic. You give on your own authority three principles which you claim are a logical base for ethics. When they are challenged you say that anybody who disagrees with you is unethical. Sounds to me like you are trying to claim that you are God; your ideas are not open to any challenge or demand for proof. Well, by your definition I am unethical. You claim your propositions are useful for everybody. I don’t find them useful. You claim that self-interest should lead everybody to adopt them. Unfortunately, pragmatism can be used against everybody just as much as for them. An employer’s pragmatic goals can run contrary to his employees. Certainly the pragmatic goals of many of our politicians run against the pragmatic goals of many of us. Affirming a position does not make it either true or logical. If you think everybody should accept your propositions, then if you really are logical, you should be able to show why they should, not just say again in other terms that they should. I’m waiting for that logical demonstration, still.

Not me, though I don’t think government is able to do a good job of it. It’s too open to politics, bureaucracy, arbitrary rules, and treating people like numbers. Private charity (organized) is far more efficient. Yes. But to many people, that’s just working the system. Tagging the exploiters is not so easy, because most of them do have genuine needs - or at least apparent needs. There is in fact a lot of cooperation between churches and food banks and government social services, both formally and informally. But when someone comes to a church pleading for help because they’ve had some unusual problem, their social services worker may be able to say, “It’s likely a scam. This person gets in on every scam available.” But rarely can the worker say it is definitely a scam. My small church does what it can to help, but we have more calls for help than we have resources to answer. One of our policies is that if someone asking for help tells us something we know is a lie, they have weeded themselves out. Often though we give help when we think it likely we’re being taken, because we don’t know, however much we check. In order to help those with real needs, we accept the fact that we will sometimes, perhaps often, get taken, despite cooperative work with other agencies and investigation as far as we are able of the request. And by the way, MS would consider us a congregation of right wing nuts. How are you helping, MS?

As one of those “right wing nuts” let me inject an element of reality and practicality into this. If you allow those on welfare to define what benefits they should get, there won’t be anything left for anybody or anything else, before long. That’s simple human nature. But let me suggest one practical concrete change that would do a great deal to reduce the welfare rolls without hurting anybody on them. For welfare or EI or disability coverage, any such help to the needy, remove the 1 for 1 reduction of benefits against earnings. I’m not sure what the exact rules are now, but it used to be a free $100 earned in a benefit period, after which you lost any amount you earned. If that were changed so that you could keep 50% of whatever you earned after the free amount, it would encourage those able to do so to work and to find jobs which increased their earnings. And every increase in their earnings would decrease the burden on the taxpayer. What do you think? This doesn’t address some of MS’s quote’s suggestions, but they are bigger, more loaded questions. For example, A lot of people who work in downtown missions, missions oriented to helping the poor with their material needs, soon become very cynical about those claims. There are enough people who are out to take the system for anything it can get to make it hard to remain open and trusting.Example: some years ago I was called by someone asking for my church to help them with some extra food, because they had some extra expenses their social assistance wouldn’t cover. We helped them. In the next week or so I had something like 8 calls from members of that person’s family, all from the same phone number, asking for help. Every one of them assured me that they were not aware that we had helped the first caller, or that anybody else from their family had approached us. It makes you very sceptical when people claim they aren’t working because of disability. Example 2: a friend tells me about a former co-worker, who is receiving a disability check from the company for back problems or at least for something that prohibits his doing heavy manual labour. But this “disabled” person regularly takes on work on his own which involves heavy lifting ... It’s easy to claim disability. There are obvious problems about disability. That does not mean that all claims are invalid or that everybody who is disabled is getting disability. It just means it’s not a simple issue.

The trick lies in that “Depending on how you read them”. If you read them in their context as normal language, that ability to prove almost anything disappears. That’s why all the various denominations of Christians agree in 95% (at least) of their beliefs. If you grab a line here, a word there, to fit your desires, you can prove anything. But the same is true of any encyclopaedia, and probably most extensive collections of biology texts. It does not mean the Bible is open to that, but only that people can twist it into a pretzel, if that’s what they want to do.

August 1991: But the problem is that your system has no definition of benefit - which I tried to make clear by reference to Stalin’s Gulag. What was “beneficial” to him was anything but, to others. All you measure is efficiency, with no base for assessing whether or not the goal is good or bad.

Sorry August, but it doesn’t escape subjective disagreements. I think it was Hannah Arendt in The origins of totalitarianism who said that to establish a totalitarian regime you needed to kill 10% of the population. Then everybody would put their faith in the government as their only hope. Assuming she was correct, it would be immoral, by your rule, for Stalin to kill 12%, but perfectly fine for him to kill 10% to achieve his objective. Aside from that, the definition itself is subjective. I have the same question for you as for the Sweal. Why should others accept that definition? What makes it compelling? In asking that question, I recognize that some will object to any definition. The question is why they ought to accept yours, not why they will. I think Idealisttotheend is right in saying that it rests on faith as much as any other does.

Oh, Sweal ... 1. Nothing is certain 2. Each human appears to be distinct 3. Human beings make choices From this ethics is obvious. Sorry, but not to me. What ethic do you build on this explicitly uncertain base? And how? Useful to whom? Fair to whom? How reliable if everything is uncertain. What was useful and to southern whites 250 years ago was not useful or fair to their slaves. I assume you mean useful and fair to encompass everybody. The problem I’m pointing out above is that people think of such things selfishly, from different points of view, and come up with different answers. What is there about your principles that compels people from those divergent viewpoints to agree? But cut deeper. Why do usefulness and fairness matter? They do not appear to derive in the least from your principles. So where do you get those concepts? Why should the desirable ethic not be survival of the fittest, “Nature red in tooth and claw”? What is there about uncertainty that is superior? Do you give top marks to the student who is uncertain about his solutions in mathematics? Is the best doctor the one who is least certain?Then we have to ask, why does prgamatism become a standard? Pragmatism sounds suspiciously like a survival of the fittest viewpoint. Are they rationally defensible? You haven't shown that yet. Your claims are large, but the development of them is pretty shaky.

Unfortunately, likely to be literally true. A despotic Supreme Court will not hesitate to punish dissent. Goodbye freedom.

Sounds to me like typical political dishonesty. Martin promised more participation. What does he give? A chance for a few people to talk about the issue.

Fine words. Now let's have some meat. What are the basic principles of your philosophy of right and wrong? Where do they come from? Why should others accept them? What makes them better than the ethics of others who begin with different principles?

Yes - and the first is the question, "Why?" What makes helping people good or hurting them wrong?

Yes, there’s a connection, MS. Many of those who reject historic Christianity will accept almost anything else, however feeble the evidence. They will say almost anything that detracts from Christian belief. But there’s another question. What is the connection between this and Canadian Federal Politics? For that matter, would it even fit in the Religion and Politics section?

TS, you argue for reason and rationality, but your words show very little of it. I don’t want to think the cause is lack of intelligence. Likely it is that you have such blind commitment to secularism that you can’t allow yourself to see anything else. But your responses make me wonder. Are you deliberately a truth twister? Or are you just blind. You asked, “What gives God the authority to appoint Adam to represent us?” Please read your own question. It is “What gives God authority?”, not “Where does it say that God appointed Adam to represent us?” I answered with a quotation from Romans 9:20 “But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” Your answer? “How on Earth do you get from there to God appointing Adam as my representative? I don't see any reference to Adam there. See, this is exactly the problem with religion ... you're just making stuff up to suit yourself.” The question was the source of God’s authority. The answer was that his authority comes from his creating us - with God’s rebuke to any man who chooses to challenge it. But you grab secondary words from your original question, words I made no attempt at that point to deal with, and act as if that was what it was all about. If you cannot even read a simple question and the answer to that without getting off the track, why should I think that if I give you a list of verses with no explanation of them you will be able to draw any meaningful conclusion from it? So THEY claim. And the support for this claim is what? Only the claim itself. No, TS. Again you have either failed to read or chosen to ignore what was written in the hopes of baffling people with words. The support for the claim is thousands of manuscripts which agree, some of them dating back to very close to the time of the originals. If you want to check it out, I’d suggest you get a copy of the standard Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, which gives exhaustive listings of the MSS available up to its date of publication, with their estimated dates. There you can check the various readings. It might be more useful to get a standard text on the issue. For someone obviously unfamiliar with the subject, it would be wise to start with something general such as F.F. Bruce, The New Testament documents: are they reliable? As your ongoing argument shows, I have offered other support for my religious views. Then I have missed it. Where is it? Then I suggest you read again my post of July 16 in this thread, section 8. As you read, ask yourself where I point to gaps in the secular understanding of the world for my evidence for my Christian belief. Then fix it in your mind that there are none. Then read through the whole thread again, and note what I actually have said. I have pointed to gaps in the secular understanding of origins as evidence that the secular view rests on faith. Nowhere have I suggested that those gaps are evidence for religious belief. If you disagree, quote me in context instead of insisting, with no evidence to support your claim, that I do that. I’m signing off this discussion, unless and until you can approach it rationally, until you deal with what I actually say instead of what you’d like to imagine I say, and answer with either evidence or logic instead of invective and blind faith assertions. But just so you don’t start accusing me again of dishonesty, one last response: The whole pattern is complex and depends on a lot of references threaded together, but these two suffice to show there is a connection of sin and death from Adam to us, a connection parallelled and cleared by the connection of sacrifice and life from Christ to us. Read Romans 5, especially 5:12-21; and 1 Corinthians 15, especially 15:12-22, 45.

Maple Syrup : The issue has nothing to do with my view of Svend, his politics or his sex life. No question, I’m what most people call right wing. But the issue is justice. Svend should get no more, and no less than any other person who commits the same crime. I think it’s clear that he got off lightly on that standard. Theloniusfleabag’s crack dealers also have the money to hire good lawyers. (Note that Svend had one of the best known Canadian criminal lawyers on his side!) Consequently they’re released promptly. The poor worker who did the same thing would be dumped on. theloniusfleabag I agree that our justice system needs a kick in the pants. I even agree with MS that property crimes should be treated differently than violent crimes. I don’t go for “decriminalizing” them. Lots of people have pointed out the problem with that. But make them costly; make people know they don’t pay. Restitution (100%) should only be the beginning. I’d suggest triple or quadruple restitution, so the thief loses even what he or she presumably got through other, more successful thefts. Only those who will not get a job and pay back should be imprisoned; and they should be put to work, with their earnings sent to pay back their victim. The prison term, of course, would last until they had paid back completely, and incidentally, learned to earn a living for themselves.

A quick check of dictionary.com and my own dictionaries gives meanings like this. Since when is the question of God’s existence and whether his teachings should affect political decisions not a religious question? How is a zealous determination to exclude God and those who follow him from the political process not a religious issue? Secularism as expressed by The TS is certainly a “cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal” - thus religion. But pass by the formal definition. Allow for the sake of argument that religion really only refers to those who believe in some god. The denial of god is still a religious issue, and those who make that a principle of our society are expressing a religious belief, though it is a negative on formal religion. If you were really non-ideological, you would insist that denial of God be excluded from civil affairs, just as much as affirmation of God is excluded. Of course at that point you have a problem, because you’ve excluded everything.

If Joe bluecollar worker with no money for a big name lawyer, or Jack homeless had done this, does anybody honestly think they'd have missed a criminal conviction? Enough said.

For once I agree with the Terrible Sweal: . But unfortunately, only to that point.When he says he is outlawing laws against theft, murder, false witness .... These are all expressions of morality.It is not the government’s task to establish morality, but it is the government’s task to apply it where necessary to guard the society in general and individuals in the society. The question that we have to deal with is how the government decides what is the appropriate moral standard. Once choice that has been common in history is to say that in practice, those with the power can do what they want, and will, so that’s the way it is. Might makes right. Unfortunately that makes it hard for us to condemn Stalin & Hitler and Genghis Khan & Bush & the little guy from the Gaspé. We don’t approve of “might makes right” when it’s the Hell’s Angels hammering in our door. A second option is the more common view in our society, that the will of the people determines what is right. But the will of the people fluctuates with a breath of wind. Depending on the way a poll is worded, 70% of people absolutely oppose abortion, or 70% absolutely support it. Of course, that’ mainly semantics. But it illustrates the reality. A few years ago, gambling and lotteries were widely rejected. Today they are widely accepted. What made you a hero last year makes you a criminal this year. If there is anything obvious, it is that the will of the people is not a standard, and arguably rarely good. After all, it was the will of the people that upheld slavery, that denied women the right to hold property or to vote. Are we to say that such things were good, right, acceptable, when they were widely supported? If so, those who opposed them were evil ... It comes back to the fact that the only secure and stable base for morality (or ethical living, or determining what is good and evil) is God’s teaching. There is no scientific principle which says something is good or evil. From the point of view of science it simply is - a murder is neither good nor evil, but simply an event. If there were no god, there would be neither right nor wrong. Given the wide variety of religious views, we may struggle to decide which is the truth. One state may choose a different base than another. But in the end, every moral view has a religious base. Even the moral views of those who are atheists began on a religious base and were borrowed by the atheists. The question of the thread is how government should determine right or wrong. The only answer which is stable, the only answer which allows meaningful challenge to wrongdoing by the government, is that the government should apply the teachings of God to protect the people of the land.

Fallacy? Like the kind you've been using throughout this thread in assuming God exists? Black Dog, if you are going to argue for something being reasonable, or logical, you should learn some logic. An assumption (whether true or not) is not a fallacy unless it assumes something that is being debated. In this case, the issue is a claim that religion is irrational, not a claim that God does not exist. Your assumption was a fallacy because you assumed what you are supposedly trying to prove. My “assumption” ... In the first place, I did not make an assumption; I have referred you to evidence for my views. You may not agree that it is sufficient evidence, but that does not make my belief an assumption. In the second place, in talking about religion, the existence of God is necessarily part of the picture. To fail to include God’s existence would be like talking about science while refusing to consider experimental results. What else does religion rely on, then? Faith is the cornerstone, the rock upon which religious belief is founded. This does not even make sense. Let me use synonyms for some of your words: “Faith is the cornerstone upon which faith is founded.” It is true that faith lies at the heart of religion. It is even true that there are many religions, and even some Christians, who rest on blind faith, who even reject reason. But Christian faith is not founded on faith. It is founded on the historical reality of Jesus Christ, his claims and his deeds. It is founded on evidence that for those who are not heavily biassed against it is clear and compelling. In short it is reasonable. You and others have been arguing vehemently that faith & reason are opposed. But you’re wrong. When I get in my car to go to the mall, I have faith that my car will get me there. It’s not irrational. I keep up the maintenance on the car, so I can expect it to keep running. I and many others have done such things many times before. There is good reason for my faith. Sometimes it proves wrong. There may be some mechanical problem that has not been detected which will stop me on the road. Or some lunatic may run a red light & smash me. But in general, that faith is justified. It is reasonable faith. The faith which is at the heart of Christian life is not blind belief in some data or even that Jesus is God and the Saviour. It is trust in Jesus as God and Saviour. It is not irrational, even though some may hold it irrationally. It rests firmly on historical fact. In 1 Corinthians 15, the Bible specifies that if Christ is not raised from the dead, our faith is empty, foolishness. Faith indeed, but not irrational faith. The foundation is not faith but truth. Yes it is. I've already addressed this. I do not recall you addressing this. Please refresh my memory and explain what is scientific about something that cannot be tested. Especially since the scientific method involves testing hypotheses. Please note - I have no problem with science which ignores the question of God’s existence. Doing that is like an accountant ignoring the success or failure of the Toronto Blue Jays. The realm of science is what is physical and repeatable, normal. The irrationality about which I am complaining is found when those who espouse science go beyond those bounds to deny the reality of God. In other words, the problem is not with science but with secularism, with militant atheism.

I am well aware that is your argument. I have addressed your argument to the satisfaction of any sane neutral observer. Science does not rely on 'blind faith' no matter how often you may say so. Science doesn't know how where the universe came from. That is not blind faith, that is an admission of ignorance. Recite all you wish, it isn't 'blind faith'. Rationality requires you to argue the issue. What I said was specific, that secularism (scepticism about religion according to my dictionary) goes on blind faith about origins. The secular view that this universe came into being by completely natural means runs against the best theories of modern science. As you said, “Science doesn't know how where the universe came from”. That makes the assumption that it did not come from God a matter of blind faith. You may not like that, but it remains true. On the contrary, I have repeatedly told you that I do not take the deficiencies of scientific knowledge as support for religious views. What I have said about those deficiencies is to show that anti-religious views are matters of faith, not reason. As your ongoing argument shows, I have offered other support for my religious views. It comes from the Bible. While the essence of the Bible’s teaching is simple, you are the first person I have met who would call it a simple book. As I said, if you are serious about these questions, and are not just trying to make cheap points, I will gladly send you materials which will allow you to check in the Bible to see if what I have said in summary is in fact there. But be warned; it will take time and thought to follow it through. Unless you are serious about wanting to know whether this is from the Bible, it would be a waste of my time to put that material together for you. Later, when I write a book on the subject (I hope), I could just direct you to the book. Romans 9:20 “But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” If I’m right, we’re talking about the omnipotent creator of all things. He made us. We belong to him. The Bible in this context and elsewhere compares it to a potter shaping his clay to whatever he wants. To ask, “What gives God the authority ...” for anything, is irrational. With no disrespect intended for God, we might say that the whole ball of wax is his toy to do with as he wants. I'm sorry, but I don't recall such evidence. Last I heard, the New Testament was not recorded until well after Jesus left. I keep making the mistake of thinking you will read what I write in a sensible way. Let me be more careful, more explicit. I presented evidence that what we have now is for all practical purposes the same as the original new testament as it was written in the time of the apostles (who were authorized as Jesus’ spokesmen) and the old testament as it was held in Jesus’ time (which Jesus himself accepted). The evidence is documentary, thousands upon thousands of manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts dating back as far as the time of those who knew the apostles, and possibly even to the apostles’ time. You are free to dispute the authority of the gospels. Lots of people do, including people with far more knowledge of the reliability of the text and the content of it than you have shown. The problem, though, is that specific challenges keep running into refutations from archaeology, etc. Do you remember my mentioning that the Bible has been the most studied and most opposed book of all time? There have been untold numbers of attacks on its historical accuracy, and its consistency. Over the years they have been knocked down like tenpins. It is easy to say the gospels are not reliable. The problem comes in producing evidence to support that claim. It’s easy to say they are not reliable, until you get down to the specifics. Then you run into problems. It’s easy to take it on blind faith that they are not reliable, trusting others who have told you this. But when you examine them with an open mind, it becomes much harder. There is no question in the mind of anyone who has looked at the evidence that what we have today is essentially what was originally written. Today there is very little question left that the four gospels were written by the apostles or their close associates in the early days of the church. The biggest issue is whether John’s gospel was written, as traditionally held, about AD 90, or if it was actually written by about AD 60. That doesn’t mean you have to believe they are reliable. You can presume, instead, that the four gospel writers conspired together to write four myths - which just happen to agree with one another. But then you have to assume that the whole early church joined the conspiracy - or at the least, all of those who had any direct contact with Jesus or with those who had such direct contact or who had any way of checking the reports. If you call that rational, be my guest. But if you don’t take that route, then Jesus’ repeated assertions about who he is, clearly understood by the Jews who heard him, show that he believed he is God. That’s where the dilemma comes, however you try to dodge it. That is a blind faith assumption if I ever heard one. Certainly not blind faith. I'm open to your disputing it. Which part ... that humans were involved in the creation of the Bible or that humans are fallible? Quoting my first sentence and omitting the explanation is not exactly honest reporting, when you then ignore that explanation to assume I’m questioning something else. I already told you what I said it was a blind faith assumption. “There is no rational reason to assume that an all powerful God could not arrange things so that the people he chose to write his word accomplished exactly what he wanted. That's what the Bible says he did.” that does not deny that humans are fallible, nor that they were involved in writing the Bible. Rather it points to God’s ability to guard against human fallibility. Saying, as you did, that “we know that the Bible is not the unaltered word of 'God'” involves a blind assumption that God does not exist, or at least does not have all power. Science makes it clear that matter/energy as we know them cannot come from nothing. But God is not matter energy. We have no evidence to say that God cannot be eternal. Secularists, holding to the view that only the world of matter/energy is real (or that there is no god), have a built in contradiction. Believers in a god who is spirit, not matter or energy, do not. That means the religious view does not have the contradiction a secular view has, and so is more logical. That seems rather straight forward. Why do you have so much trouble seeing it? I have not suggested you should just blindly accept the answers of religion. It’s more than obvious that not all religions can be right. I would not even suggest that every religious view is rational or even close to it. As I said before, I believe the ultimate test is Jesus Christ. That is because he walked this world in historical times, AND claimed to be God. He’s not just a prophet or a teacher who might be mistaken. If his claim stands the test, then what he says is the ultimate authority. My invitation to you is to test by Jesus Christ. Study what the Bible says about him and compare it to reality. If Christ’s claim to be God is not supported - in particular, if he did not rise from the dead - then Christianity is wrong, and you should look elsewhere. But if, as I believe, he is the risen Lord and God, then he is the one you should follow. Since he himself said he is the only way of salvation and peace with God, all other religions are thereby excluded - as is secularism.

Two things, Kimmy. First is that in this the CHP is doing the same thing that everybody else does. The NDP in power legislates its beliefs, the liberals, the conservatives, the Bloc all do the same. Why is it OK to legislate secular beliefs and not others? Isn’t that a denial of pluralism? Second, how big a percentage of the population has to agree with you for your view to be mainstream? 35% of the population were firmly anti-abortion the last time I looked at polls on the subjection. I keep hearing that a majority favour capital punishment for some offences. What are the mainstream Canadian values? And what defines them as mainstream? Let me suggest a single value in which the CHP is outside the mainstream - that is its belief that it is good for Christian commitment to inform and regulate one’s political action. For the last four or five decades, we as a country have been sold a bill of goods. We’ve been told, and most have accepted it, that the only religious belief that has a legitimate place in the government of our country is secularism. The secularists have said that because they don’t worship some god, they are not religious but neutral. It’s a black lie, though most of them today cannot even seen that. Their view is just as religious as mine. It just happens to be a anti-god religion instead of a pro-god religion. And they are completely intolerant of anybody who challenges their claim to the reins of power. Unfortunately, people have listened to the slippery, deceptive talk, and accepted it. So now it may trouble people in some instances, but they accept the principle that secularists can legislate their religious views, but nobody else should be allowed to do so. In fact, anybody else who offers to do so is SCARY!!! The CHP is outside the mainstream in this, because likely 90% of Canadians have been led down this garden path. Note that I am defining mainstream as consensus, vast majority. I think that’s the only non-censoring definition that’s possible, but I’m willing to hear an alternate proposal, if you have one. Until you define the term though, it is just a scare word with little real meaning. It becomes an ad hominem abusive attack, in logical terms. Point well taken. The only answer I can give is that the CHP does a more detailed and careful job of defining its views and commitments than any other party I have seen. But that does not deny your point. Obviously I can’t assure you of that. I have no confidence in the justice system in our country, and I don’t think a CHP government could change that very much in less than about 25 years in office. It would take that time to see that judges who would adhere to law and not write their own were in place. Further, there are situations in which homosexuality is just cause for termination. The most obvious are in religious institutions which believe that homosexual practice is sin. Mind you, for many of these a habit of malicious gossip is also grounds for termination. Giving special protection to homosexuals just leaves such groups open to attack. That’s the principle reason it is a problem. Turn it around. Can you cite me examples of public schools today in which it is not promoted? The Supreme Court, Chamberlain vs Surrey School Board, (2002) ruled that the school board could not forbid teachers to present pro-homosexual books to Kindergarten & Grade 1 classes. The only option given those who have moral objections is to find a private school for their children or home school them - without ceasing to pay taxes to support the public system which supposedly has no biases.

Actually, I don't think it ever was banned in Canada. I certainly don't recall a test case. It seems that most schools just dropped it voluntarily over the last 25 years or so. “The Ontario Court of Appeal struck down the use of the Lord’s Prayer in public schools in Zylberberg v. Ontario, in 1988. [Janet Buchanan, Withering rights: Religious freedom in Canada (Faith Today Publications, 2004), p. 26.]

Of course, you exclude search for objective truth that points to God.