[BRIEF NOTE] What gay rights are all about

This news story has gotten quite a lot of attention.

Gay rights groups and newspaper editorials on Tuesday condemned the Vatican for its decision to oppose a proposed U.N. resolution calling on governments worldwide to de-criminalise homosexuality.

The row erupted after the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations told a French Catholic news agency the Holy See would oppose the resolution, which France is due to propose later this month on behalf of the 27-member European Union.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would "add new categories of those protected from discrimination" and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

"If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations," Migliore said. "For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as 'matrimony' will be pilloried and made an object of pressure," Migliore said.

A strongly worded editorial in Italy's mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican's reasoning was "grotesque".

Pointing out that homosexuality was still punishable by death in some Islamic countries, the editorial said what the Vatican really feared was a "chain reaction in favour of legally recognised homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation".

Franco Grillini, founder and honorary president of Arcigay, Italy's leading gay rights group, said the Vatican's reasoning smacked of "total idiocy and madness".

"The French resolution, which is supported by all 27 members of the European Union, has nothing to do with gay marriage. It is about stopping jail and the death penalty for homosexuals," Grillini told Reuters.

While I find the Vatican's attitude is deplorable, I also disagree with Grillini that the French resolution has nothing to do with gay marriage inasmuch as the removal of legal stigma against non-heterosexuals and non-heterosexuality is but the first step towards the removal of stigma full stop. If a society found it as normal to be (say) gay as it is to be left-handed or of the pasty pale skin persuasion, then especially--but not only--if the society actively campaigned against discriminatory behaviours the homophobe would be in as much trouble as the sexist. Such a society would complicate the lives of homophobes--for examples, see the sex counsellor in England who was fired for refusing to take same-sex couples on as client or the Saskatchewan civil marriage commissioner who was let go for refusing to marry same-sex couples.

I'm for this kind of society, simply because I don't believe I deserve to be discriminated against on the grounds of my sexual orientation, or my skin colour, or for that matter my left-handedness. I'm a person just like any other who deserves to be treated with the same dignity and respect that others demand. Separating the legal stigma from the social stigma feels to me like an arbitrary exercise, not least because the legal stigma is product of the social stigma. Others are of the same opinion about the unity of these two stigmas, but, alas, some of these hold a different opinion on the acceptability of homophobia.

[LINK] "Rae dropping out of Liberal leadership race"

I'm not sure what I think about this news item.

Toronto MP Bob Rae will withdraw from the Liberal leadership race Tuesday, paving the way for rival Michael Ignatieff to serve as the party's next leader, two sources told CBC News.

Rae is scheduled to hold a news conference in Ottawa early Tuesday afternoon, when he is expected to make the announcement and reveal his reasons for the decision.

Rae has been under increasing pressure from inside his party to bow out of the leadership contest to replace Stéphane Dion. His departure leaves Ignatieff as the sole contender.

The only other candidate — New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc — announced Monday he was ending his leadership campaign and throwing his support behind Ignatieff.

The party executive must now determine how to install Ignatieff in a way that meets with the approval of most party members.

The executive had decided Monday to widen the selection process to about 800 members, rather than leaving it in the hands of the caucus.

Rae had been adamantly against having a select few choose the leader, instead pushing for all rank-and-file Liberals to have a voice in the decision.

With Ignatieff poised to take the helm of the party, the Liberal-NDP coalition could get abandoned.

While Rae was a supporter of the coalition set up to topple Stephen Harper's minority Conservatives, Ignatieff has been cool to the pact.

Over the weekend, he summarized his position as "coalition if necessary, but not necessarily coalition," echoing Mackenzie King's fence-sitting position on conscription.

I do like the idea of Michael Ignatieff as the leader of the Liberal Party since he seems like the best candidate out there, especially since Bob Rae five-year tenure as leader of a NDP minority government in Ontario was marked by the sort of sustained economic and political disaster that would complicate national campaigns. That said, I don't want Ignatieff to junk the idea of a broad-tent coalition, not least since I don't think that the Liberals are capable of standing up to the Conservatives just yet.

[LINK] "Anne gets a new beginning"

John Adams' article in The Globe and Mail yesterday, "Anne gets a new beginning", called my attention to the fact that Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables fame now appears to have two canonical but conflicting backstories, in the form of Budge Wilson's Montgomery heir-authorized prequel Before Green Gables and the Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning media project by movie producer Kevin Sullivan.

Budge Wilson's yarn accepts as gospel the story in Anne of Green Gables that Anne's parents, school teachers Bertha and Walter Shirley, died of "fever" within weeks of each other in Nova Scotia, when their only daughter was just three months old. From that point, plucky Anne endures years of adoptions and orphanages before finally being sent, at age 11, to PEI and the Cuthberts' farm.

In Sullivan's interpretation, the dual-death story is a fiction, dreamed up by the precocious Anne to cover her shame at the actual circumstances of her mother's death, her father's involvement in that death and Walter Shirley's eventual desertion of Anne to start a new life in New Brunswick. It's a fiction that the 57-year-old Anne is still holding onto at the start of Sullivan's tale.

I'm tempted to add that a third backstory would be L.M. Montgomery's own thoughts on the matter, but since she never wrote a prequel I suppose that they don't count, if they have been recorded at all.