[BRIEF NOTE] That's all?

[rfmcdonald]

Stephen Harper's hostile response to Bill C-38, which will establish same-sex marriage in Canadian federal legislation, is disappointingly incoherent.

• Harper positions "New Canadians" as a community permanently and innately opposed to same-sex marriage. One might think, given the Conservative Party's rather weak support among immigrant groups, that he's trying to attract the support of the sizable portion fo the Canadian population of first- or second-generation background. What a pity that Canada's immigrant communities are rather diverse, and composed of actual people who (surprise!) are no more identikit conservatives than Canadians of longer vintage.


• Harper argues that the denial of same-sex marriage rights isn't a particularly serious violation of human rights, compared to what has happened in "Rwanda or China or Iran." This is true. It is also true that what happened in China and Iran (not Rwanda) pales compared to the autogenocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The fact that one set of human-rights violations is more sanguinary than another set doesn't make the second set go away. One might as well say that so long as a country isn't smashing in the skulls of everyone with a Grade 4 education with pickaxes, there are no human rights violations of note.


• Harper argues that the establishment of same-sex marriage would force non-religious private institutions to grant the same recognition. Well, yes, that's what anti-discrimination laws are for. Now, you can make a case that private institutions should be allowed to discriminate against individuals on the basis of their ethnicity or religion as well as their sexual orientation without being racist; but, given his attempts to reach out to "New Canadians," I somehow doubt that he really wants to do this.

I'm disappointed that Harper can't come up with stronger arguments against same-sex marriage, if only because they'd be fun to dissect.