There’s been a few stories recently dealing with hate and hateful responses, and I just wanted to draw attention to two in particular…
Deportation: The Weapon of Mass Expulsion
Mother Khadr and her younger son (now paralyzed from the waist down after fighting Pakistani forces in Afghanistan) have returned to Canada. They have distasteful views, have supported al-Qaeda, suicide bombing, and terroism against the west.
She has said that she wanted to have her family raised in an al-Qaeda camp, away from influences that could turn her sons into drug dealers or homosexuals.
Do I sympathize with them? Get real! Is she a hateful, spiteful barnacle on the rump of humanity? Very much so. Is she totally, unrepentently bats? She’s as looney as a bag of one dollar coins! Has she committed any crime in Canada? No…she and her family, as far as our system of government is concerned, are law-abiding citizens.
Does she and her family deserve to be deported? Absolutely not! This is Canada, where freedom of speech means freedom to say what you think, as long as you do not force that opinion on others. Today’s Globe and Mail editorial puts it very eloquently: expressing support — in words — for democracy’s enemies, is not a crime. Not in a democracy.
I’m reminded of a wonderful speech at the end of Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The American President: (If you support constitutional freedoms), then the symbol of your country cannot be just a flag. It must be a citizen, exercising their right to burn that flag in protest! Celebrate that in your classrooms…then you can talk about the Land of the Free.” My sentiments exactly.
Truth be told, the movement to deport this family boils down to right wing, fundamentalist crap that should have died in the 1950s. That we still have to fight this today is a sad commentary on many members of our society.
It’s okay to hate gays…NOT!
Page A5 of today’s Globe and Mail grabbed my attention for another reason. A parent group is fighting the London, Ontario Public School Board for its efforts to teach about homosexuality, and to provide support and a safer environment to gay students who are suffering abuse, bullying, and intimidation.
The parent group is called STOP: Simple Truths Our Priority. The group apparently uses (quite selectively) information from U.S. religious websites that campaign to prevent information about homosexuality being taught in schools. According to child-rearing expert Barbara Coloroso, who was horrified to discover the group using her writings as backing for their arguments, STOP’s literature and campaign amounts to “intolerance, bigotry and hatred cloaked in the garb of religion”.
I simply cannot stand the two-faced bigotry of these people. In one breath, they claim that “they have never been against gay safety”, and want the bullying of gay students to end.
Yet the parent of one gay-and-out student in London, who was forced to transfer schools due to harassment, and is fighting for her rights and her safety, says she is of two minds. According to the article:
“She has lived through the pain of seeing her own daughter being harassed for being gay, but she doesn’t want schools to teach the view that homosexuality is “normal.”
To say that this is another example of the McCarthyist wave of paranoia, hatred, bigotry and intolerance attempting to invade Canada, is an understatement. Hatred for gays has become institutionalized in the minds of many people, most of whom do not realize that they are fuelling a civil rights movement on a scale not seen since the 1960s.
So let’s be clear: gays and lesbians are human beings, who deserve the same rights, protections, and freedoms as heterosexuals. It’s that simple. People who disagree, institutions who disagree, are simply wrong…and history will sweep them aside with a mighty fist.
I would like to also offer the radical (if strangely OLD) idea that “separate is not equal”. But that’s something for another rant…
