Journalist for Life

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, known as Joan-E. I don’t know who Joan-E is, but I think Mr. Trudeau – known as Pierre-Me – was also someone who liked to dress up – in his case as someone who pretended to care about Canada, but who actually liked to play games with a country he considered too old-fashioned, too English, too Christian and far too pro-life. So I was rejected again. I can’t say it doesn’t hurt, because it does.

When asked about the ‘tribute’ to his father little Justin Trudeau, who has of course abandoned his drama teaching to become an MP and desperately wants to be Liberal leader and prime minister, opined that his father would have been very proud and honoured -– and then everybody patted themselves on the back and bathed in the comforting thought of how liberal and tolerant they were. Oh to be in Canada now that silliness rules the day.

As ridiculous as the entire enterprise is, it’s not really about homosexuality, fame or even dressing up. It’s about a country that obsesses about celebrating what keeps us apart rather than what binds us together and emphasizing group rather than individual rights. Canada is a tenuous nation at best and what we have done since the days of Trudeau and the Charter is to enshrine and empower the moans and groans of every minority interest group in the country.

Gay people have a right to be gay. Just as Muslim or Jewish people, sports fans or Star Trek devotees or anybody else have a perfect right to be exactly who they are and what they want to be. But their first and most important loyalty should be not to their sexuality, religion or hobby but to their citizenship. This was the case at one time in our history, but no longer.

The reason so much of this changed under Trudeau was that he governed Canada as an extension of his own social fantasies. To him the country was a political experiment that required the restructuring of a great nation and the fixing of what was not broken. As Canadians we enjoyed freedoms, rights and legal protections and also knew from cultural norms and public education that there were numerous responsibilities and duties essential to living here.

We could be proud of our particular sub-group but were aware that those groups freely existed only because of the greater umbrella of Canada. This sublime and workable ideal was carefully torn apart during twenty years of political and judicial interference. Leading to a society today where we are defined by what offends or supports our various ethnic, sexual and religious causes and not by red and white, the Canadian passport or the authentic history and meaning of Canada .

So instead of, for example, museums of Canada we have museums of civilization or human rights. Instead of halls of fame to great Canadians we have them to great Canadian homosexuals. It’s all so misplaced, disingenuous and damaging. Children leave school knowing almost nothing of our past but certain of which famous people are gay and how minority rights are vital to a thriving democracy. What our young people will not see, of course, is a museum dedicated to the rights of the unborn, the old and the terminally ill or to the dignity of marriage and the family. Nor will they be taught lessons about the reality of abortion and euthanasia or, for that matter, how Christianity and Christian values and virtues formed this country and gave Europe, North America and Australasia the freedom and progress they now take for granted.

We in the pro-life movement do not, in fact, ask for halls of fame or museums, merely for our case to be heard fairly and respectfully. That, however, does not happen. If we are not arrested and assaulted we are mocked and insulted; if we are not defunded and lied about we are fired and told that we have no right to speak our mind. It’s something old man Trudeau seems to have desired and something of which I’m sure most if not all of the organizers of the Queer Hall of Fame would approve. So it looks like I’m never going to make it. Oh well, I rather prefer the hall of famous truth.