And now it's blaming Harper's Tories for the same sex marriage motion defeat.
"... The wording of the motion added to its rejection as it included acceptance of same-sex 'marriages' that have already taken place under the current law."You can't be serious. Is the author actually trying to write away the defeat as being Harper's fault? Was it Harper's fault that not enough pro-trad marriage MPs were elected and re-elected in the last election? Was it Harper's fault that many in the trad marriage movement seemed to push for this vote?
"It is widely acknowledged that the measure was not a serious attempt to reopen debate. CanWest News reporter Janice Tibbetts captured that message in two lines of her coverage. Tibbetts wrote: 'Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man who promised to bring the contentious same-sex marriage issue back to the Commons, was absent from the chamber and had no plans to defend traditional marriage as debate opened Wednesday on whether to revoke Canada's same-sex marriage law. The Commons was virtually empty, with about 20 of 308 members showing up.'
Similarly, it seems that the folks at LifeSiteNews were also very eager to blame Harper for the defeat of social conservative Dianne Haskett's campaign in London North Center.
It's time for a wake up call in the social conservative movement in this country.
If you don't admit YOUR OWN mistakes you will never win.
Let me say that again - if you don't accept your own faults and try to learn from your OWN mistakes you will never win.
Remember whenever you point a finger at someone, there is always three fingers pointing straight back at you.
The trad marriage movement in this country should have counted the numbers. They were plainly obvious that they didn't have what it took to win.
That doesn't mean that can't change. The natural thing to do would have been to stall. Harper's pledge was a vote to re-open debate that would settle the issue once and for all.
The trad marriage should have done two things: stalled, but kept Harper's feet to the fire. Stall until another election that won't be far from now, and organize like nuts to try to affect the outcome to change the equation in the house. The whole time they would have to keep Harper's feet to the fire that a vote would eventually come.
It just makes me sorrowful for this country, because I don't see social conservatism going anywhere as a movement until the mentality of many social conservatives change.
We have to learn from the enemy. We have to learn and adapt. That's the only way to success.
The truth of the matter is that this is Harper's fault to some extent. The Conservatives proposed this motion knowing it would fail.
ReplyDeleteWhatever.
ReplyDeletePlease, if socons make up x % of Canadians, please name the fair representation in the media?
Are there x number of socons at CBC? CTV? Global? the Globe and Mail?
Are there any?
The SSM issue was strategically paid for by all candians through the court challenges program.
It was cheered on by partisan human rights tribunals.
It was rammed through by a judge in Ontario with personal conflict in a gay daughter.
It was cheered the whole way through by the mainstream media.
Harper got re-elected on a promise of having a free vote. The problem was that the free vote still recognized existing marriages and unions, thereby setting the whole inequality process up again for a challenge.
Canada has taken an extreme position in the world and anyone who disagreed was labeled a right wing extremist by the media.
Dont accuse the only miniscule media outlet to defend trad marriage of "going to far" and not say the same of the mainstream.
LifeSiteNews doesn't care one bit about the CPC, I went to a pro-life conference partially sponsered by them a year and a half ago. Most of the MPs that they had speak were Liberal MPs, of all of the socially conservative MPs, they picked mainly from the few Liberal ones!
ReplyDeleteBut yes, I would blame LifeSiteNews and Campaign Life Coalition or whatever else happened to be involved in this movement. When I saw the stats regarding how they voted in the past and how some had said they would vote, I knew there was no chance. So when I received an email in the past 24 hours asking me to help ring the phones off the hook in Ottawa, I just thought to myself, "What's the point?" I really didn't feel like pointlessly calling Ottawa, especially when I have studying to do.
What I think the smart thing to do from day one would have been to have been lobbying the government to take marriage out of the constitution. Leave some civil union definition in there for everyone, and that's all that they would need to have in there. That way neither side could complain, and we don't have Big Brother telling us what to believe and what marriage should mean to us.
But no, the badly thought out plan brought by these activist groups had to shoot for what could never be achieved in a socially-liberal Canada. Then they kept pushing at the Conservative government to uphold their promise, so they could do what? Lose! All today's vote did was reaffirm Parliament's belief in same-sex marriage.
These newbies to the government lobbiest game better get their heads on straight if they're going to get anything good done. Social conservatives in Canada are already starting to live on the defensive, meanwhile these groups are living as though they still have the majority of citizens behind them. We need to compromise, respect the liberty of others, and so what if they don't agree with you?
By all means, if it's a religious thing, those who don't believe will just end up burning in eternal hell fire anyway, wouldn't they?
So I suggest that they just start lobbying for smaller government to keep their tax dollars out of funding other peoples ideas.
"The Commons was virtually empty, with about 20 of 308 members showing up."
ReplyDeleteIt is unfortunate, but the LifeSiteNews people don't seem to watch too many of the debates on CPAC. That is what usually takes place: very few MPs show up. Only those scheduled to speak put in an appearance, with a few supporters gathered near the "debater" so that they can be caught on camera.
Also, contrary to what some pundits and reporters have stated, this particular motion was not intended to immediately return to a definition of traditional marriage. The motion introduced was to determine whether the question of SSM should be revisited.
As Mr. Harold Albrecht (Kitchener—Conestoga, CPC) stated during yesyerday's debate:
«The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights had conducted hearings across Canada ... The committee spent untold hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, 465 witnesses appeared, 250 briefs were presented and thousands of letters were received.
Unfortunately, all that work and effort was ignored. All that input was never compiled into a report and presented to Parliament. In other words, the committee hearings were nothing more than a sham and they deceived Canadians by allowing them to think that they were part of an important national debate. ...
The issue before us today and the vote tomorrow is not a vote on traditional marriage, but it is a vote to allow debate on traditional marriage. ...
My request, and the request of millions of Canadians, is for Parliament to reopen this debate so the report can be tabled and Canadians can all have real input on this important matter. Thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent conducting these hearings. Therefore, in the interest of wise stewardship alone, we owe it to all Canadians to have this work completed. However, there is much more at stake than simply getting good value for money in having this report tabled.»
It is thus disingenous of reporters like Janice Tibbets to write things such as: «'Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man who promised to bring the contentious same-sex marriage issue back to the Commons, was absent from the chamber and had no plans to defend traditional marriage as debate opened Wednesday on whether to revoke Canada's same-sex marriage law.»
And equally disingenous of so-called "News Bureau Chief" Robert Fife at CTV spouting things such as "this vote was a sham." Or "The debate was a meaningless debate with no consequences."
Maybe both Tibbets & Fife need a refresher course in reading comprehension.
You are bang on here.
ReplyDelete"Dont accuse the only miniscule media outlet to defend trad marriage of 'going to far' and not say the same of the mainstream."
ReplyDeleteTouche.
I guess I hold news outlets like LifeSiteNews.com to a HIGHER standard than other media outlets because of their principled stand.
"By all means, if it's a religious thing, those who don't believe will just end up burning in eternal hell fire anyway, wouldn't they?"
ReplyDeleteIt's not just a religious issue. It's an issue about social engineering by the left. They want to use the government of Canada to make those that disagree with same sex marriage marginialized. Gays and lesbians already have equal status under the law. This was always a symbolic battle which sometimes can be more important than a real one.
If it was about rights they would be pushing for civil unions.
"So I suggest that they just start lobbying for smaller government to keep their tax dollars out of funding other peoples ideas."
Like same sex marriage?
the free vote still recognized existing marriages and unions, thereby setting the whole inequality process up again for a challenge
ReplyDeleteThis was highlighted by SSM advocates. But there is nothing unusual about "grandfathering" provisons in repeals, or revisions, of statutes.
In the USA, for example, most states have abolished common-law marriage and replaced it with statutory marriage. The marriages that were established under the old way were still given legal standing as marriages but not past a specified date.
Grandfathering is not peculair to marriage, let alone some odd provision necessary in repealing last year's SSM error. It is used in tax laws, in corporate laws, and in all kinds of statutory, common-law, and regulatory laws.
The idea is to not penalize peoplel who had used the old law -- the one being repealed or revised. Now, if the correction was retroactive, that would be more problematic.
In Massachusetts the proposed marriage amendment, which was stifled by procedural obstructionists, had the same sort of grandfathering. Revision of this sort of error can't be perfect. Once again, SSM advocates made the perfect the enemy of the good.
The SSM law of last year replaced the common-law definition with a statutory definition. But it did not really change marriage itself. What it did was replace the thing that the government recognized with preferential status.
Instead of marriage, the social institution, the government substituted civil union, but kept hte name and appropriated the social esteem for the social institution it used to accord special treatment.
It was a merger of two unlike things. That's the fundamental error that needs to be corrected wherever SSM is enacted under the auspices of marital status.
SSM is not marriage. But calling it marriage seems to be the game at play. It is a falsehood and falsehoods are quicksand. Now all marriages are defined by the limitations and boundaries of the one-sex-short relationship. This effects all of society, not just those who choose, with freedom, the nonmarital alternative that is same-sexed.
The replacement is unjust. It is against the Charter of Rights. And it will have reprecussions throughout society, based on the false equivalency; the equality claim is not tethered to a stated purpose for the merger of unlike things. And thus civil union (now misleading called marriage) has gain a preferential status without a purpose -- so how will policymakers, and the electorate, be guided on how to treat that replacement?
I know people may think polygamy is a nonstarter or a seperate issue, however, polygamy is further up the slippery slope than SSM. So time will tell just how society will be guided in apply the hollow equality claim to other currently non-preferred arrangements. The Charter has become a blank check -- it is being undermined and the signs are already there that the Charter will become disfunctional.
As much as SSM has created confusion about marriage, the social institution, it will also do harm in the jurisprudence of equality and of constitutional interpretation in general. Self-governance is at issue as can be seen in the previous comment of Anonymous at 10:26 PM.
The upshot: I agree that this failed motion in the House cannot be placed at the feet of Harper alone. There is a long road to haul and this free vote set a precedent that the electorate ought to pay full attention to.
The Liberal party did not have a free vote on C-38 and did not have a free vote on this motion. Both were whipped -- regardless of the partisan spin on it.
Dion clearly, and emphatically, announced how Liberals, particularly the frontbenchers, had to vote under his leadership. Even backbenchers who worried about the unity of their party decided to vote against this motion rather than face being forced to vote FOR SSM if remedial legislations was subsequently brought forth. Dion did whip this vote, no matter what he said moments before the vote was held. It was clear to all Liberal MPs where the new Boss expected them to stand on this issue.
And that is reflected in the small percentage change in the split in the House. The vote moved from 55%-45% in favor of C-38 (an openly whipped voted) to 58%-42% against the motion to revisit (a blatantly non-whipped whipped vote -- you know, like a non-apology apology). 5 to 8% shift would have defeated the SSM side. And I am quite sure that among the Liberal lrank and file, as well as the Liberal MPs, the split is closer to the 60-40 split in the country as a whole.
So those who defend marriage should certainly be humbled in acknowledging that they did not get organized earlier and that, on this motion, they did not have a coherent strategy.
But I'm guessing that the 1999 House vote may have put people to sleep -- in that vote the Liberals joined to make a vote of 85-15% in affirmation of marriage as the union of a man and a woman; and they declared that this was constitutional; and they vowed to defend all of that.
Yes, self-governance is at issue.
"It's not just a religious issue. It's an issue about social engineering by the left. They want to use the government of Canada to make those that disagree with same sex marriage marginialized. Gays and lesbians already have equal status under the law. This was always a symbolic battle which sometimes can be more important than a real one.
ReplyDeleteIf it was about rights they would be pushing for civil unions."
Oh I know, that's really what the court rulings and Charter were about, rights under the law, and that's why the SCOC really didn't say they needed to change the definition. So they could have left it. But Martin and his friends at the Court Challenges Program just had to push it further. I highly doubt we'll ever have marriage back, but we can at least prevent the government from defining it.
"Like same sex marriage?"
Yes, like same sex marriage and other things that social conservatives disagree with. Tax dollars shouldn't be going into it. I'm sure the gay activists would have a big hissy fit if tax dollars went into some pro-family groups.
My comment was an attempt to take a neutral approach to the issue, I might start blogging under my real name with that approach.