John Robson has a good piece in the National Post noting that after Patrick Brown won the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership, the condemnation of his social conservative views was near-universal in the media as he was advised to dump his socon supporters and tack to the center on social issues. Robson says that socons are treated worst than lepers considering that nowadays lepers are treated with compassion while social conservatives are shunned as icky relics of a bigoted bygone era. It should be noted that even in the Forum Research poll that found most Ontarians support the liberal position on abortion and same-sex marriage, about a quarter to a third of people still hold some socially conservative views; one out of four or one out of three people is still a significant chunk of the population and they deserve to have their views respected, not mocked and marginalized. As Robson notes, the idea that social conservatism should disappear because the issues that social conservatives care about are “divisive” ignores the fact that “the whole point of public debate to talk about things that matter where opinions differ.” A Robson says, almost every issue, from how to deal with ISIS to taxes is “divisive.” Why the focus on social conservatives and socially conservative issues?
