Sunday, October 01, 2006

Harper's Valley PTA

I rarely complain about Canadian politics on here, and that's strange in a way. Sure, American politics are generally descending into the mouth of madness, but there are plenty of irritants here as well. And, to be honest, I think it's a bit easy for Canadians to get complacent and figure that things might not be perfect here, but at least they're not as wacko as they are south of the 49th parallel.

However, I am assuming that other people up here are also irritated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to 'reopen the marriage question' in the House of Commons. Not only because it's a complete waste of time, but because there's no real issue there. Sixteen months ago, gay marriage became legal in Canada, and nothing much has happened. In the States, people can say, "If gay marriage becomes legal, then people will want to marry their cat! Do you want that? What the hell do you bring to a man-cat wedding anyway? A toaster and a scratching post?!"

Here, they can't make this argument. Nor can they say that society will fall apart. Gay marriage has been legally recognized for sixteen months. So far nobody wants to marry a pet. Society hasn't collapsed. The CN Tower hasn't turned pink. Nothing much has happened. And according to polls, a majority of Canadians are fine with gays getting hitched. I don't know anyone who cares at all.

But, someone cares. The Defend Marriage Coalition has been lobbying their MPs to save us all from Bob and Gord signing up for the marriage registry. And a group called United Families Canada is pushing to "defend marriage, family and life wherever they are challenged", which makes them sound like Superman, instead of the blue-nosey prigs they are.

Or, maybe I should say 'blue-nosey yanks'. The group is an off-shoot of United Families International, a US conservative organization who has been funneling money north of the border to get the issue of same-sex marriage 'reopened' in the House of Commons. So, not only do these people not represent Canadians, they actually represent the American religious right. I'm not exactly a nationalist- in fact, I'm not Canadian at all and I like to think that I personally influence a Canadian cat and woman. But, I'm guessing that, if a Canadian organization was funding political pressure in the states to change the laws in America, people would be bitching.

So, Stephen Harper has promised these losers that he's going to waste everyone's time with this nonsense, and the House of Commons, wanting to side with the 73% of Canadians that are fine with gay marriage, will decide to keep gay-marriage legal, and nothing will change, but at least, Harper will look like a 'defender of families' to the busy-body creeps who are horrified that somewhere there might be someone who is both: (a) unlike them, and (b) happy. And it's probably okay to be a little complacent about it because these people will eventually wear themselves out beating this dead horse and go home. But, it's also okay for Canucks to email the MPs and let them know that they don't want the US religious right deciding their policies.

4 comments:

Jordan said...
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Jordan said...

Interestingly, I just started myk own blog entitled "Graduate Student Madness." I have to do it for a communication technology class. I've never done a blog before, so I was searching google for some inspiration. I happened across this blog and was wondering if you have any good tips to have more people read your blog. If you have the time, hit me up:

call4909@blue.unco.edu
Jordan Callier

Rufus said...

Yeah, I have no idea really. I think I'm less interested in that than I could be.

Rufus said...

By which I don't mean that I'm not interested in your question- just that I'm not really interested in getting more people to read the blog. That seems to take the fun out of it for me.