I thought I knew what pro-choice means. I guess I don’t. In fact I have difficulty with most pro-choice language. Take sex-selective abortion. It’s about expectant couples who prefer sons to daughters and use ultrasound to find out what they’re going to have. If it’s a daughter, they abort her. When I learned that pro-choicers are against sex-selective abortion, I [...]
There is nothing right or left-wing about pro-life, but pro-lifers are repeatedly and ridiculously condemned and dismissed as being on the right. Life, however, is more important than political labels. But while we know of the murderous fascists of the 1940s, we need to understand something of those assumed to be the good guys – the socialist thinkers and writers [...]
From a pro-life perspective, President George W. Bush may have been less than perfect, but in comparison to his successor, he is looking ever better. Bush devotes an entire chapter of his compelling memoir Decision Points to the controversial decision he announced in a televised address on Aug. 9, 2001, to authorize federal funding for embryonic stem cell research using [...]
It’s a rare film that justifies its running time, and if over two decades’ worth of movie reviewing has taught me anything, it’s that every film, no matter how good, is probably too long. That proved itself once again with The Social Network, one of the films tipped early on as an Oscar favourite when it was released this fall. It’s just [...]
Sometimes life can be disappointing. Just like when I was a child and that longed-for present wasn’t in Santa’s sack, my hopes were dashed recently when I was once again not included on the list of the inductees into Canada’s Queer Hall of Fame. Last year saw the first inductees: Pierre Trudeau, swimmer Mark Tewksbury and drag queen Robert Kaiser, [...]
I am the proud possessor of a Bob Feller autographed baseball card. On reflection, however, my pride should be tempered for two reasons. According to certain knowledgeable collectors, there are more of his cards around sporting his signature than not. Feller, the former Cleveland Indians ace, has been most obliging at innumerable card shows. At 92 years young he has more post-induction [...]
Take care if you aspire to be a criminal. A life of crime can be bleak and unrewarding, unless you go to jail. As long as you’re on the run, you have few options. Once you’re incarcerated, you have more than you can pursue. Like most criminals, however, you may never make it to jail. If you do, opportunities abound. [...]
I was invited to Rob Ford’s victory party in Toronto in a live 10-second phone invitation and he implied everybody was welcome. Ford said that people were already starting to arrive early. Ford’s people were expecting over 2000 but they came in with around 1500. That is still an amazing figure. I guess the Ford sign on my front lawn got me [...]
There are no accidents in popular culture. Trends and fads might crest with seeming randomness, but do not be fooled – every hit movie, TV show or book and the copycats in its wake are meant to scratch some cultural itch. The motivations might be obscure at the time, but hindsight reveals all, so I cannot help but anticipate just what led [...]
“Welcome to Earth – population zero,” goes the ominous tagline at the start of every episode of Life After People, the History Channel-produced documentary series that aired its second season just recently in Canada on History Television. It’s our cue to get cozy and enjoy an hour’s worth of empty cities falling to pieces, if they’re not inundated by rivers and seas, [...]
We appear to be living in the darkest of Dark Ages. We have a convicted bombmaker, Inderjit Singh Reyat, as per the Toronto Star (Sept. 10), who repeatedly told the Air India trial, “I don’t know,” “I can’t remember,” “I can’t recall” and lied 19 times during his testimony, according to Crown lawyer Len Doust. Reyat already pleaded guilty to supplying bomb [...]
In early October in Ottawa the police arrested five students from Carleton and Queens universities for displaying a pro-life exhibition at Carleton. They were peaceful, merely expressing an opinion and showing people the realities of abortion. Some of the pictures were graphic in nature but then abortion is graphic in nature and death and killing are bloody and nasty. In an [...]
In unilaterally striking down three key provisions of the Criminal Code, that prohibit the operation of houses of prostitution in Canada, on Sept. 28, Madam Justice Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court indulged in an illegitimate exercise of raw judicial power. Her ruling overturned the law, distorts the Constitution of Canada and violates the fundamental separation of legislative and judicial [...]
I usually do not put much stock in the message that falls to the table when I crack open my Chinese Fortune Cookie. I fully expect it to be positive, reassuring, and designed not to interfere with my digestion. Nonetheless, my most recent experience with this confectionary was a deviation from the norm and much more philosophical than usual. It read: “To [...]
There’s a scene early on in The September Issue, a recent documentary about Vogue magazine’s doorstopper-sized fall edition, which must have made the filmmakers gasp when they knew they had it captured. At Paris fashion week, an unnamed but very chic-looking woman stage-whispers in French into the ear of a highly improbable man named Andre Leon Talley that “Anna is the most [...]