Charles Moore

First, bravo to Tom Wappel, Roseanne Skoke, Dan McTeague, Dennis Mills, and several other MPs on the government side who have braved derision and scorn from their caucus colleagues, risked party discipline, and put their political careers on the line to oppose enshrining the gay-rights agenda in law.

Boo to the ideological conspiracy hell-bent on ramming not only tolerance, but also acceptance and approval of homosexual behaviour down Canadians’ throats by force. A big, loud, boo to New Brunswick Tory Senator Noel Kinsella and other senators for volunteering to do justice Minister Allan Rock’s (Boo to him too, while we’re at it!) dirty work for him, sneaking a gay-rights amendment to the Human Rights Act into Parliament through the Senate back door. Boo to Senator Philip Gigantes for his supercilious and contemptuous treatment of REAL Women’s Gwendolyn Landolt during her presentation at the Senate hearings on the gay-rights bill.

Boo to Jean Chretien, for telling Canadians that the gay-rights amendment would be moved to the back burner for the rest of the Parliamentary session, then moving it back onto the front burner. It is awfully hard not to interpret this as a Machiavellian stroke calculated to lull the opposition off their guard and then blindside them.

But the biggest Boo of all is reserved for the “silent majority,” both in the Parliament and in general society, who are repelled and disgusted by the militant homosexual agenda, but to gutless, intimidated, or dysfunctionally polite to stand up and be counted. These “nice” folks annoy me more than the likes of Allan Rock and Noel Kinsella, who at least have stated their real opinions without prevarication. It’s long past time mainstream Canadians “stood up to be counted” on this issue.

Privately reviling moral cancers is not enough. I expect that a substantial majority of Canadians, including MPs and senators, get a bit queasy viewing spectacles like homosexual MP Svend Robinson showing up at the governor General’s Ball with a boyfriend on his arm, or the banal and vulgar excesses displayed in so-called “gay pride” parades and demonstrations. But most choose the shameful and cowardly, albeit “safe,” path of silence, leaving a handful of courageous individuals like Ms. Skoke and Mr. Wappel to defend morality and family values in the public square.

All opposition to the gay-rights agenda is reflexively branded as “hate,” and regrettably, a lot of well-meaning, kindly Canadians are deceived and intimidated by this ideological distortion.

Any decent person will denounce genuine hatred directed toward persons or groups, whether or not they agree with, or approve of, the latter’s ideas and/or behaviour. What must be understood is that negative criticism of homosexuality—including forceful disapproval on moral grounds—does not constitute “hate,” and defining such expression as prohibited ground of discrimination in Human Rights legislation is wrong and unjust. Homosexuals already enjoy the same protection under the Charter of Rights as all other Canadians. There is absolutely no sensible reason to grant them special protection based on their unfortunate sexual habits.

Certain specifically prohibited grounds of discrimination under the Human Rights Act refer to highly visible and intrinsic characteristics of personal identity, i.e.: race and gender. Others, like national origin and religion, may be less visible, but pertain to profound aspects of cultural identity.

Homosexual orientation (or any other sort of “sexual orientation”) does not qualify under either category. It is absurd and illogical for individuals to predicate their social identity solely or even predominantly on bedroom activities. If one chooses to do so, society is under no rational obligation to grant him/her special rights and privileges based on participation in a voluntary behaviour—regardless of what motivates it.

Homosexual orientation is a complex phenomenon for which no genetic or physiological cause has been proved. In more rational times not so long ago, homosexuality was considered by the psychiatric profession to be a dysfunctionally adaptive form or mental illness. No new scientific evidence has been discovered since then indicating otherwise, and homosexuality’s removal from the list of psychiatric disorders was motivated by politics—not research. However, even if a genetic predisposition to homosexuality were scientifically identified, it would still constitute a biological dysfunction—an abnormality. In natural terms, the only objective function served by sexual activity is procreation, which simply cannot apply either potentially or in fact to homosexual liaisons.

What consenting adults choose to do with each other in private is their business, but they have no moral claim to demand society’s stamp of approval on deviant practices.