Kenney Pulls Gay Rights from Citizenship Guide

[blueblood]

I doubt it. There wasn't any regulation around credit in the 20s and look what happend. 10 years later, great depression

And the gov't tried and tried and tried, but could not get the country out of it. Europe is one of the most regulated places on the planet, they still managed to get into a deep recession. From what I've seen, regulation prolongs the inevitable and makes the bath a lot worse.

Meh, not really. Germany, France now, England are hardly socialists. Spain, Italy and Greece and Portugal are going to have to fall in line and cut costs. Ireland benefited as much from their economic policies as they suffered from them. They opened up and cut taxes, the problem was when the crisis hit, everyone divested because it was easy to do so. Other than that, th EU itself is doing what most modern economies should be doing. They're investing in infrastructure, R&D and tax incentives for companies that produce new technology. EU multinationals are slowly taking over from American ones.

I think you underestimate the resilience of the American economy. Sure the US takes baths from time to time, but they dry off rather quickly. The USSR took a bath and drowned.

The CBC is debatable. I agree with the CRTC, but a country without welfare, foreign aide and other things like that wouldn't be a country. The more you cut people off from society's help, the more they're going to turn to crime.

If you would look at crime stats from the 50's when the gov't was a bunch of cheapskates, the crime rate was lower than it was today. I'd say it's a sense of entitlement that leads to a turn to crime, that attitude wasn't as big back then as it is now.

My link

No, they don't. It started in the US and spread to the EU. The EU will recover and the euro will gain stronger. There's the possibility that the low Euro might help the European economy. Most EU nations export and the high currency has hurt that aspect of the economy.

The EU, is one of the biggest luddites at the WTO. They dump their products into countries and will not import, and if they do it's tariff time. Their agriculture philosophy is a house of cards. I would argue that the chickens came home to roost in the EU because partly because of the largesse of their gov't spending. Canada which is more reliant on the US as far as growth is concerned is faring far better, partly due to keeping tight on gov't spending.

And the low US dollar won't do anything?

The USSR never got any social services so really, the commieland comment is ridiculously stupid. You really should read a book about the USSR. I respect most of your arguments, but honestly, you're doing yourself a disservice by comparing Canada and Europe to the Soviet Union. It's stupid. Really really stupid.

The USSR provided the biggest social service of all - gov't employment for everyone. I look at Socialism as a scale, with the USSR being at one end, and Ireland/USA at the other, Europe is inching closer and closer to the USSR as far as how involved their gov't is in their economy. And lets not get started about Venezuela.

I want the government involved but not heavily involved. I believe that in most industries the private sector is the best way to go. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have the government looking out to protect us from scammers and morons. The entire conservative movement is based on the fact that markets are rational and will always distribute the most amount for the cheapest prices. Not true. Why? People aren't rational and markets are only extensions of human emotions. I can't remember his name but some dude managing a hedgefund made billions by making really weird calls based on that very fact. Lets just ditch all regulations. That means I can start selling medical licences online for 1000 bucks a pop. That means I should be able to use child labour or be able to pay someone $1 a day.

But people are rational, they want things for as cheap as possible. If people don't have something they will buy it, if its too expensive they won't. I look at markets as a two way street, sometimes you can do well, sometimes you can do very poorly. The market can be very generous or very cruel. Most people do not like the cruel aspect of the markets and will naturally vote for gov'ts that will bring in policies that try and lessen the blow; the problem is, that "lessening the blow" ends up pushing the problem down the line, until it goes pop. The CRA is a prime example of this, as was communism.

For example using the medical liscences for 1K per pop, the market would be flooded with doctors, however, people would catch on to what the good doctors are and what the bad doctors are, and the doctors get forced out of business. This process takes a while, and is risky, and cruel. Gov't has essentially done the same thing much more quickly by imposing standards, but those standards cost a lot of money to implement, money that can be used elsewhere and society pays through their wallet rather than the consequences of a shotty doctor. Both achieve the same result, but both have much different costs. Now ideally a person wants a balance of the two, but where the balance is at is up for debate.

There needs to be laws to keep things in check. There need to be regulations to keep people from taking insanely crazy risks. They need to be smart so they don't stifle, but the ridiculously radical notion that no regulations are at all are somehow the promisedland of economics is just not feasible.

It's not the feasibility, it's the ability of a society to cope with risk and rewards. Some people cope better than others. By imposing regulations, you take out the risk, but pay in terms of rewards reaped. The question obviously is whether or not regulations should take place, but how much? The party that can convince the most people of that often wins the gov't.

Like I said, you get what you pay for. I know where I'd rather live.

That's fine, and judging by urban Ontario voting patterns, your fellow citizens agree with you. Out west however that is not the case. What works in urban ontario doesn't necessarily work elsewhere.

[Dave_ON]

I believe what you mean to say is that you're waiting for the answer you approve of; that's what loaded questions are meant to bring. Revisionism also helps you convince yourself you're right, too.

But, I'll try and put it this way: attraction of varying degrees to both genders comes unbidden to everybody at different points, with differing frequency. The choice lies in whether one acknowledges and/or acts on those impulses, or merely subverts them in their preferred method and lives the proper "gay" or "straight" way.

I never said anything about overbearing mothers. And if you think I fall into the same category with Mr.Canada on this matter, you're clearly not reading what I write.

[c/e]

I do believe I quoted Mr. C directly and didn't even quote you in the post you're quoting or reference you in anyway shape or form. Your original position was rather ambiguous at best, and while I feel you lend a great deal of undue credence to behaviourism I don't disagree with your main point. Your point was clarified in a subsequent post; clearly I misunderstood your original position. In fact we share the same central view though our definition of "attraction" may be quite different. Clearly you can be "attracted" to people for different reasons, emotionally, intellectually, sexually, what have you. It’s entirely possible to be attracted to a given gender but never actually desire sexual relations with them.

You are correct, sexuality is a combination of impulse and choice, however practicality wins the day. It is utterly impractical to go through one's entire life responding to random impulses towards one gender or another, you have to pick a team and play as it were unless you're only interest is a casual relationship which if that is the case have at it. So yes I suppose out of necessity one chooses "gay" or "straight" however, what I think you're failing to acknowledge, or are simply obfuscating, is that most people are more strongly drawn one way or the other, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was truly 50/50.

[msj]

Tabatha Southey has a funny look at this issue in her recent column in the Globe and Mail:

For Canada's new Citizenship and Immigration study guide to stay at its current length and include the words “Same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2005” – words cut, as we learned last week, under Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's watch, although not, he insists, by his authority – we would've had to lose the words “Canadian children have collected hockey cards for generations.”

And then where would be? ...

Canada, by the way, is one of only seven countries in the world in which same-sex and opposite-sex marriages have equal standing in law. However, we are one of only four countries in the world in which hockey cards are routinely traded. Before you judge Mr. Kenney, a long-standing opponent of same-sex marriage who is considered to be (and actually is) our Immigration Minister and who, either by inattention or design, included the hockey-card information and excluded any reference to same-sex marriage, take a moment to imagine that you come from a country in which it's not acceptable to trade hockey cards.

Imagine you were raised somewhere you'd be discriminated against or beaten senseless or risk untimely death because of your hockey-card collection – or that you yourself, while uninterested in collecting cards, beat other people in your homeland with impunity the second you discovered that they owned a deck.

The whole article is quite funny.

[eyeball]

Apparently Jason Kenney lived in San Fransisco for awhile. Makes you wonder why he's got such a hard-on against gays.

Is he still Canada's oldest virgin?

[msj]

Apparently Jason Kenney lived in San Fransisco for awhile. Makes you wonder why he's got such a hard-on against gays.

That reminds me of "There goes the Gayborhood" from The Daily Show.

Can't seem to find a reliable link right now which is really too bad. (In the US, or using an anonymous IP, you might get it here)

IIRC, one of the "reporters" from TDS interview a guy about his move to SF and how it isn't exactly "family friendly."

Like the guy didn't know what SF was like.

The "reporter" acts very sympathetic and tells the story about moving next to an airport etc...

[Argus]

Well hell, neither was Canada. Blacks, Asians, Ukrainians, Jews, Natives...name your favorite oppressed "minority". Funny part being, it's still official policy to regard some as "visible minorities"...what an absurd idea!

We should use niggers and chinks like you Americans do?

[Argus]

Apparently Jason Kenney lived in San Fransisco for awhile. Makes you wonder why he's got such a hard-on against gays.

Gays don't vote for or contribute money to Tory candidates.

Why on earth would you expect any Tory, then, to care about gays?

[ToadBrother]

Gays don't vote for or contribute money to Tory candidates.

Why on earth would you expect any Tory, then, to care about gays?

So let me get this straight. MPs are only supposed to care about those that vote for them? This extends to the government as well? So what you're saying is that the Conservative Party of Canada is the party for straight Canadians?

[Argus]

So let me get this straight. MPs are only supposed to care about those that vote for them? This extends to the government as well? So what you're saying is that the Conservative Party of Canada is the party for straight Canadians?

I'm saying that there is a certaint group of citizens that all parties care about. That group consists of those who will or those who might vote for them. None are particularly interested in those not in that particular group. Since Gays are not in that group, insofar as the Tories are concerned, their priorities are going to be pretty low on the agenda for any Tory government.

[g_bambino]

But, it is important because people who chose to cover up their sexuality, as you say, chose to do it for social reasons. My argument is that it happens way less in the gay community. People are far more open to heterosexuality as well as bisexuality. They don't really care which knocks a hole in your argument about bi's having to cover up their affection for te opposite sex due to gay people ostracising them. Absurd. It's called LGBTQ for a reason, the B stands for bi.

You can't knock a hole in my argument by using "gay" and "LGBTQ" as synonyms. They are not. The former is one of the constituent groups that make up the latter.

You also don't win by revising what I said into something I didn't say. I said the great majority of people in Western society are pressured by the culture's common thinking into choosing membership in one of two groups organised around sexual desires. Remember that almost the entire populace is familiar with the wider scope of sexuality only through what they see in mass media, which we both know is ubiquitously lazy and devoid of detail, always condensing the most complex human affairs down into an puerile but easily digestible binary arrangement. Regard that, though marriages can take place between two bisexual women, a gay man and a bisexual man, two lesbians, or any such combination, popular media still lumps it all under "gay marriage", as opposed to "straight marriage". What was Brokeback Mountain but a "gay cowboy movie"? Politicians who cheated on their wives with men are immediately labelled "gay". & etc. Indeed, I've seen the words "gay" and "homosexual" used as though they were the names of a legitimate species.

Thus, the widely disseminated, and now self-feeding, belief is that gay/lesbian and straight are the only two real options available for almost all human beings; transsexuals are biological aberrations, bisexuals are a quirky minority - men either indecisive or too cowardly to admit they're gay, women in an acceptable phase - and "queer" is merely a synonym for "not straight", which popular culture simply translates into "gay" anyway.

Those who populate the gay/lesbian community aren't somehow more enlightened on sexuality simply because they don't call themselves straight; their beliefs are as affected by what's learned through customs and broadcasts as are those of the rest of the wider population. Yes, through the '70s and '80s the gay/lesbian community accepted the existence of and allied itself with the B, T, and Q groups; but, the association certainly didn't alter the gay/lesbian community's common ethos, any more than the emergence of these groups altered the popular concept within the straight community, that gay is the main alternative to straight. Indeed, the bisexual, transsexual, queer, intra-sexual, two-spirited, and whatever other dozens of deviations have sprung up in the last week, are still, all together, smaller than the gay/lesbian community. An odd arrangement, when we consider the fact that all people are bisexual to some degree; these divisions weren't so in centuries past, among humans no different to us today.

Hence, I don't favour the gay/lesbian community in any way; they're merely a bunch of people who choose to apply the same label to themselves. As I've said already: if anything, the citizenship booklet should have made brief mention of Canadian society's broadening sexual horizons, but not specifically, and specially, gay rights.

[g_bambino]

Your point was clarified in a subsequent post; clearly I misunderstood your original position. In fact we share the same central view though our definition of "attraction" may be quite different. Clearly you can be "attracted" to people for different reasons, emotionally, intellectually, sexually, what have you. It's entirely possible to be attracted to a given gender but never actually desire sexual relations with them.

You are correct, sexuality is a combination of impulse and choice, however practicality wins the day. It is utterly impractical to go through one's entire life responding to random impulses towards one gender or another, you have to pick a team and play as it were unless you're only interest is a casual relationship which if that is the case have at it. So yes I suppose out of necessity one chooses "gay" or "straight" however... you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was truly 50/50.

Well, I might say one could find one's self attracted to any person, regardless of the gender, either sexually, emotionally, or both. Certainly, it's likely that each of us will always have a dominant preference, at least for significant periods of our lives, and you're right that practicality somewhat disallows impulsive behaviour (though relationships can be flexible enough to permit some experimentation and deviation). But, the point is, society should generally give up its commonly held philosophies on sexuality that are so narrow as to treat any non-compliant sexual attraction as somehow an affront to nature. In other words, at least let the impulses be felt and permit the choice to act on them or to switch preferences - in either direction! - without fear of negative peer pressure in response. Being pushed to conform in one of two camps is only slightly more liberated than being forced to fit into one of one.