[LINK] "LGBTory makes progress with Conservatives on gay marriage"

[rfmcdonald]

Daily Xtra's Dylan C. Robertson reports on the progress of the Conservative Party's LGBTory caucus' progress. There has indeed been some, as I noted in September 2012, but as I noted in August 2015 the party still maintains what I think is an unbelievable official opposition to marriage equality. Still, the Conservatives are not as bad as (say) the Republicans to our south.

A group of LGBT Conservative Party supporters say they’re making some headway in pushing the federal party to reverse its official stance against same-sex marriage.

LGBTory spent the weekend of March 6, 2016, speaking with hundreds of delegates at Ontario PC party convention, which together drew hundreds of participants from across the country.

Among the weekend’s successes, the group says, was hearing Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown voice support for same-sex marriage, despite opposing it a decade earlier.

“Today I’m proud to support equality in marriage,” Brown told the conference, saying all the federal parties have “evolved.”

In 2006, before entering provincial politics, Brown sat in Parliament and voted with the federal Conservative Party to reopen the same-sex marriage debate, a year after Canada legalized it. “That was part of the federal platform of the day,” Brown said.

Brown also noted he was the first Ontario PC leader to march in the Toronto Pride parade in 2015, in an effort to realign the party, away from social conservativism.

However, Brown has opposed the Ontario Liberal Party’s sex education reform, and also voted three times against initiatives to enshrine gender identity and expression in the Canadian Human Rights Act.