The Interim will continue to keep readers informed about the drive of homosexuals and lesbians for social acceptance, legal protection and equality of status. Our purpose is and remains to raise awareness about this anti-life, anti-family movement.
Editor
1: THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA
On June 23 ‘gays’ and lesbians in Ottawa held their first parade ever. Some 500 people were said to have turned out for the afternoon event which concluded “the end of a week-long celebration”.
This small local parade was fully covered in out-of-town newspapers such as the Toronto Star and the Toronto Globe and Mail. The Toronto Star, which gave only begrudging and unsympathetic coverage to the “Life Chain” of pro-lifers two weeks earlier, even though it was 50 times the size of the Ottawa event, carried two large pictures, one of the parade in Ottawa, another of the seventh “Gay-Pride Day” in Washington, “which draws thousands”>
The Globe featured a large photo of two men in drag dancing along an Ottawa street. Two weeks earlier, the same newspaper printed neither picture nor report of the “Life Chain” even though there were 5,2000 active participants in Toronto alone.
Wide coverage
Taking the two big Toronto newspapers – one the largest, the other the most wide-spread in the country – as samples, one can easily trace the greatly expanded coverage and sympathy extended today to the homosexual lifestyle.
The day before Toronto’s “Gay Pride Day” on Sunday, June 30, the Globe’s Saturday edition carried a lavishly illustrated, two-page-long article on “Gay in the Nineties”, with the second page subtitle, “AIDS a catalyst for demands for justice”. These two aspects of the homosexual community – its sexual activity and the AIDS disease – are intimately related, as the article fully substantiates.
The strangest part is that AIDS, which has claimed the lives of 2,200 homosexual Canadian men, has also strengthened the power of the homosexual community at large. As Globe reporter Alanna Mitchell puts it, “AIDS has been the catalyst for much of the demand for justice.”
The use of the word “justice” here is one indication how a presumably ‘objective’ article can be a disguised form of promoting the homosexual point of view. In fact, not only this article, but practically every article and news-report in Canadian newspapers employs the terminology and interpretations of the homosexual party.
And that number of articles and reports is incredible. In the month of April 1991 alone, for example, articles and news reports concerning aspects of homosexuality, including AIDS and condoms, numbered 45 in the Toronto Star, including three editorials’ 40 in the Globe (including one editorial) and 16 in the Sun. Of these 101 items only two, both by columnists in the Toronto Sun, could be classified as, in any way, critical of the ‘gay’ phenomenon.
Deliberate policy
Needless to say, the extensive coverage of ‘gay’/lesbian events is not accidental but, rather, part of a policy of underwriting the basic claim of the homosexual community to be a minority in a multicultural society with all the rights that adhere to such a status.
Indeed, as the appellation of being ‘deviant’ (from the general norm) is removed from homosexuals, the concept of deviancy is being applied increasingly to opponents of the homosexual lifestyle. These are now accused of being “intolerant”, “prejudiced”, “homophobic”, “discriminatory”, “hate filled”. As the idea gains popularity, the cry is raised to silence them. This process is now underway as the following report will illustrate.
2: EXODUS
Toronto – On June 24, Exodus International, a California-based organization of Evangelicals which aims to help homosexuals change their sexual orientation, held its 16th annual convention in Toronto. Hardline homosexuals were angered at the fact that the convention took place at all, and especially that it was timed to compete with a series of events leading up to “Lesbian and Gay Pride Day”, June 30.
As Jack Kapica noted in the Toronto Globe, what was at issue was a debate over the nature of homosexuality: “Is it a natural, God-given state, or a learned condition from which one can be freed?”
Rev. Brent Hawkes of the Metropolitan Community Church, a ‘church’ specifically created for homosexuals, said that “God doesn’t care about our sexual orientations” and therefore created a lot of diversity in the universe. He argues that Exodus forces people to become “schizophrenic.”
Bob Davies, executive director of Exodus, maintained on the other hand that “freedom from homosexuality is possible by a life in Christ.” “We recognize the underlying issues”, says Davies, “look at them in a Biblical framework, we pray with them, express forgiveness to parents, and start rebuilding a relationship with the same-sex parent.” This is a very long process, he conceded, which takes years.
In opposition to Exodus, the Metropolitan Church organized a service, supported by various Christian ‘gay’ groups. Exodus, said ‘gay’ spokesmen, does a lot of harm; its assertions that homosexual activity is sinful and that it can be cured are wrong; its techniques arouse guilt, shame and fear, which drive homosexuals out of churches and out of Christianity. The Metropolitan Church, on the other hand, “accepts people the way they are.”
Kevin Oshiro, a spokesman for Exodus, said that his organization is the opposite of homophobic. On the contrary, it is helpful to homosexuals: most of the 500 delegates at the convention were people like himself who had “come out of a homosexual struggle” and wanted to help others, he said.
Bruce McLeod
Exodus was also attacked in a Toronto Star column (June 25), entitled “Gay ‘cure’ group affront to dignity” by Rev. Bruce McLeod, who gave his blessing to homosexual activity and the campaign for homosexual ‘rights’. McLeod is the newly elected president of the Canadian council of churches.
According to McLeod, Christians should not only accept homosexuality, but rejoice over it as one aspect of the variety of God’s creation. He deplored Exodus’s view that God wants homosexuals to change.
McLeod welcomed the fact that Toronto had officially sanctioned ‘Gay Pride Day’. He was gratified by the increasing acceptance of homosexual couples in society and the gradual extension of the same benefits to them as married couples enjoy. If you stretch any family circle wide enough, you will find homosexuals, and over the centuries their heritage has contributed to our common good.
Gays and lesbians do not need “fundamentalists” to introduce them to Christ’s transforming love, he said. As for expecting them to live celibate lives, “repression is a sad way to live, and a denial of God’s creation.”
3: DEMAND FOR EQUAL RIGHTS
Toronto – The manager of Toronto’s human rights and employment equity programs is a lesbian. She is another example of how homosexuals are placed in positions of influence which they then use to promote their ‘lifestyle’ (see Editorial and “Lesbians placed in top posts”, The Interim June 1991). She has filed a complaint of discrimination with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Mary-Woo Sims declares that same-sex partners, including her own, are denied the health benefits enjoyed by married spouses and common-law partners. “I don’t think I can maintain credibility among the employees at Metro if, when I recognize something is clearly discriminatory, I sit back and say nothing,” Miss Sims said.
Metro Chairman Alan Tonks responded that the municipality does not have the legal authority or right to extend the benefits: the definition of spouse under the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Municipal Act is a person of the opposite sex. Metro could open itself to lawsuits if it provided the benefits Miss Sims wants without the legal power to do so, he said. “And quite clearly that is a matter for the provincial government to decide.” (Star, June25, 1991)
But homosexual activists are not standing by idly. If they have their way, Canadians won’t have to wait long before the definition of ‘spouse’ is changed.
4. SVEND ROBINSON, MP, PROPOSES LEGISLATION
Ottawa – On June 19 homosexual NDP Member of Parliament, Svend Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway), introduced and had accepted for first reading the following five bills proposing amendments to the Criminal Code:
– a bill to prohibit the spanking of children as a means of correction.
– a bill to add sexual orientation to the Canada Human Rights Act.
– a bill to add sex and sexual orientation to the definition of “identifiable group” in Section 318, which prohibits advocating or promoting genocide of an identifiable group, in the hope of additional penalties to ‘gay’ bashing over and above those for assaults.
– a bill to force all alcoholic beverages to carry a printed warning for pregnant women that alcohol consumption may cause birth defects.
– a bill to amend the definition of the term spouse in the Income Tax Act and the Canada Pension Plan to include homosexual couples. (Hansard, June 19,p. 2087)
All five bills fit the now accepted practice of government social engineering on sexual-marital affairs which started in earnest in Canada with the Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s campaign of 1968. Trudeau’s slogan “the state has no place in the bedroom” was used to uproot and remove from the Criminal Code the traditional (Christian) prohibitions against sexual and marital immorality.
Ever since, the state has entered the bedrooms of the nation with a vengeance, promoting – at taxpayers’ expense – the prevention of human life (conception); the dissolution of the family (easy divorce); the killing of life (abortion0; the perversion of sexual relations (homosexuality); and a whole series of other anti-family measures including taxation policies, redefinitions of terminology, legal ‘reforms’, and the financing of feminist, homosexual, and Planned Parenthood organizations.
Confusion
Mr. Robinson’s fourth Bill (re alcoholism) is an example of the intellectual confusion which now dominates politics. He proposes a measure to help protect unborn babies from harm by irresponsible mothers; yet at the same time Robinson is also a committed supporter of every woman’s ‘right’ to kill her baby by abortion for any reason whatsoever.
Robinson’s office has been busy distributing petitions and mail-in cards to make it easy for people to address the government on the issue of amending Canada’s Human Rights Act.
- MRS. KIM CAMPBELL
Ottawa – Mrs. Kim Campbell, the current Minister of Justice, has indicated she is preparing a series of changes to the Criminal Code which almost certainly will include some of the measures proposed above by Mr. Robinson. Campbell, who, like Robinson, is from British Columbia (MP for Vancouver Centre), is a die-hard feminist. Her proposed changes will reflect those views.
5: PREMIER DONALD CAMERON
Halifax – The new Nova Scotia government of Donald Cameron has indicated that it is prepared to protect the homosexual lifestyle from opposition (called discrimination) by store owners, businesses, organizations, etc.
As a preliminary step, Attorney-General Joe Matheson is proposing a clause forbidding “discrimination based on an irrational fear of contracting an illness or disease”. The disease he has in mind is AIDS.
This measure, which in essence forbids people to be fearful, has been approved in principle and moved to a committee for public hearings. The meaning of neither the term “irrational” nor that of “fear” has been defined. But it is another first step to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
7: HEROES OF THE PEOPLE
Toronto – Following the appointment of lesbian Laura Rowe to the Toronto Police Board in April, the Toronto Board has now recognized ‘gays’ and lesbians as a community ‘legitimately’ entitled to policing “that is sensitive to their needs”. (Star, June 29)
Meanwhile, the homosexual community has achieved another victory in the drive for acceptance. Permission has been received to erect a monument in Cawthra Square Park, a Toronto city park. The memorial is to the 700 Toronto homosexuals who have died from AIDS. The Globe printed a laudatory article about the designer and his work (June 15).
Until now only those fallen in Canada’s wars have been so honoured.
8: CRTC AND “SEXUAL ORIENTATION”
Ottawa – The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is thinking of adding ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of topics to be screened for “abusive comments” or “abusive pictorial representation.”
Under the current popular definition of discrimination, anyone who opposes or gainsays the legitimacy, or doubts the moral validity of homosexual activity, is said to be homophobic or hate filled. The CRTC action, therefore, will effectively prohibit all criticism of the homosexual lifestyle, if it is enacted.
Readers who have not as yet submitted to the current standards of political correctness, may write the
Secretary-General, CTRC,
Mr. David Colville
CTRC – Central Building
1 Promenade du Portage
Hull, Quebec K1A 0N2
