Chris Alexander on ‘barbaric cultural practices’: ‘It’s why we lost’ | CTV News

2016/10/11 Leave a comment

Without the ‘crocodile tears’ of Kellie Leitch, former Minister Alexander also disavows the ‘barbaric cultural practices’ tipline:

The Conservative proposal to set up a barbaric cultural practices tipline is one of the reasons the party lost the 2015 election, former immigration minister Chris Alexander says.

“I regret very much several issues that we blew up to a scale they should never have reached in the last campaign. It’s why we lost,” Alexander said in an interview with Evan Solomon, host of CTV’s Question Period.

“It was a terrible campaign. That announcement was the wrong one for that time.”

Alexander is now considering a run for the Conservative Party leadership. He says he’s finalizing the paperwork and will make a formal announcement in the coming weeks.

He’ll be facing off against Conservative MP Kellie Leitch, who appeared with Alexander last fall to promise the creation of the tipline, which was widely denounced and mocked on social media by people pointing out those in need of a tipline to report a crime could call 911. Leitch has distanced herself from the announcement, but says she stands by the message. She’s also since promoted the idea of a Canadian values test for immigrants, which other Conservative leadership candidates have roundly criticized.

Despite disavowing the tipline, Alexander – like Leitch – said the underlying value behind the announcement is important.

“I’m not going to back away from my commitment to women and girls who are facing the horror of forced marriage. It happens in Canada, it happens to 15 million girls and young women around the world every year, and young men as well,” Alexander said.

“I think Canadians get it. But we allowed ourselves to be portrayed in the last election as unwelcoming. That was a huge mistake.”

‘Not my policy’

While Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong has been strongly critical of Leitch’s proposal to apply a values test to new Canadians, calling it dog-whistle politics, Alexander took a gentler approach.

“It’s certainly not my policy. It does make a lot of immigrants … nervous,” he said.

“It makes them feel unwelcome and it’s not workable in immigration terms. I can tell you that as someone who was very committed to defending Canadian values as minister of citizenship and immigration for two and a half years.”

Alexander also faced criticism as immigration minister over the slow pace of Syrian refugee approvals and lack of information made available under his leadership. The Conservatives pledged in January, 2015, to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees. When the haunting photo of Alan Kurdi, a toddler who drowned while fleeing and who drew an emotional reaction from Canadians in the middle of the election, Alexander says the Conservative campaign didn’t react quickly enough.

“I very much regret that after Alan Kurdi’s body was photographed on that beach, and we all mourned his loss and what was happening in the Mediterranean and across Europe, we didn’t respond as fast as we could have with a much stronger commitment to Syrian refugees,” Alexander said.

“I wanted us to respond quickly after that day. It took us two weeks. I think that was a mistake as well.”

Source: Chris Alexander on ‘barbaric cultural practices’: ‘It’s why we lost’ | CTV News

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

The Difference Between Racism and Colorism | TIME

2016/10/08 Leave a comment

Lori Tharp’s Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families makes the case to talk about colourism rather than racism and prejudice. Seems more semantics, as the substance is largely the same:

In the U.S., it has been repeatedly proven that skin tone plays a role in who gets ahead and who does not. Despite the fact that the word colorism doesn’t exist, researchers and scholars are now systematically tracking its existence. A 2006 University of Georgia study found that employers of any race prefer light-skinned black men to dark skinned men regardless of their qualifications. Sociologist Margaret Hunter writes in her book, Race, Gender and the Politics of Skin Tone that Mexican Americans with light skin “earn more money, complete more years of education, live in more integrated neighborhoods and have better mental health than do darker skinned …Mexican Americans.” In 2013, researchers Lance Hannon, Robert DeFina and Sarah Bruch found that black female students with dark skin were three times more likely to be suspended at school than their light-skinned African-American counterparts.

Suffice it to say, one’s health, wealth and opportunity for success in this country will be impacted by the color of one’s skin, sometimes irrespective of one’s racial background. Even darker-hued white people have different experiences than their lighter-hued Caucasian counterparts when it comes to access and resources. Colorism is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of this nation that we are all implicated and infected by its presence. And the sad thing is, for many people the lessons of color bias begin in the home.

In black families, Latino families, Asian-American families and obviously interracial ones, too, skin colors can vary in microscopic gradients or in obvious shades of difference. Luckily many parents are able to create a safe-space in the home where skin color differences only matter when it is time to buy sunscreen for the beach. But too often, the pervasiveness of a color hierarchy in the outside world seeps into the household and becomes part of the implicit and explicit teachings of parenting.

That is not to say that the solution to solving our color problem as a country lies in the home, but that is precisely where the conversation should begin. From day one, parents of every color should begin to celebrate color differences in the human spectrum instead of praising one over the other or even worse, pretending we’re all the same. Then, we could have a more public facing, cross-cultural dialogue about the more global problem of colorism and plot its necessary demise.

Source: The Difference Between Racism and Colorism | TIME

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Members of dormant national security roundtable seeking answers [CCRS]

2016/10/08 Leave a comment

Always found the CCRS a useful forum during my time working on multiculturalism issues, where we would bring the “soft side” of counter-radicalization approaches to the table.

While it is normal for a new government to review the mandate and the membership, and whether or not it duplicates other consultative bodies (I think not), pleased that the Liberal government has signalled its intent to maintain the CCRS:

A group of Canadians who advise the federal government on national security issues are in the dark about the future of a 16-member roundtable they were appointed to.

Members of the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security are supposed to meet in-camera at least twice a year, yet the group hasn’t met since October 2014.

The roundtable was set up in 2005 to act as a sounding board for cabinet ministers and other high-ranking federal executives on how security matters and government policies affect different ethnic communities. Over the years, it has covered topics such as countering violent extremism, migration and cyber-security.

“I feel I’m in limbo,” said Farzana Hassan, a newspaper columnist and past-president of the Canadian Muslim Congress who was appointed to the roundtable in June 2015.

“It seemed like a very good fit and I jumped on the idea and I accepted the appointment, but I have not heard anything,” she told CBC News.

This past spring, Hassan and several other members contacted by CBC received a letter informing them that the government is re-thinking the roundtable’s activities and composition.

“I get the sense that they would want us to resign because we were appointed by the previous government and, you know, this government’s policies and outlines on certain issues is very different from the previous government,” said Hassan.

“I feel I can do more. I can share my ideas, but I have not been given the opportunity to do so,” she said.

Chair sees lack of communication

Myrna Lashley, a psychologist, was appointed to the roundtable in 2005 and has been the group’s chairperson since 2007. But after receiving the letter in March, Lashley suspects her involvement has come to an end.

“Effectively when you get that letter, you have been told ‘thank you,'” Lashley said.

In the meantime, Lashley is concerned the federal government is not communicating as effectively on national security issues with Canada’s ethnically diverse communities, such as Syrian refugees.

In the past, Lashley says the group met with and advised ministers of public safety and justice as well as senior executives from the RCMP, CSIS and Canada Border Services Agency on all sorts of issues that could or would affect an array of cultural groups.

“We could give them an idea of how different communities might react to something so that they could formulate it in a way that would be acceptable to all Canadians,” said Lashley.

Lashley points to the creation of the special advocate program, which provided independent, top-secret, security-cleared lawyers to represent people subject to a security certificate or immigration proceedings.

“We were the ones that said ‘let’s try a special advocate,’ that came from us,” Lashley said.

The Department of Public Safety refused CBC’s request for an interview. But in an email, a spokesperson said, “While the government is currently reviewing the membership of the table, it looks forward to resuming CCRS meetings in the near future.

Source: Members of dormant national security roundtable seeking answers – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Multiculturalism, Security Tagged with , , ,

Muslim Women’s Clothing: Alia Hogben

2016/10/08 Leave a comment

Good piece by Alia Hogben of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women:

We would agree that clothes are a form of non-verbal communication as they can transmit social signals and identify a person’s class, income, beliefs and employment.

In addition to this kind of cultural norm, they may also communicate religious beliefs. For example, the Amish, the Mennonites, Hasidic Jews and many Muslims express their ideas of modesty by the attire they wear. The rules affect both genders but more emphasis is on women’s dress. For all these women, modesty includes covering their head and their hair, and being physically segregated at certain times or places.

We don’t have to like or agree with the different ways women choose to dress, but surely we can accommodate these choices about clothing as long as they don’t impinge on others, or require onerous accommodation, or become obligatory for all of us.

For example, there is no consensus among Muslims about whether women’s head coverings are mandatory. So any state or country which mandates women’s dress, especially Muslim women’s, is wrong. In the same way, no state should decree that these women should be uncovered.

The burkini is a bathing suit that covers all of the female body except the face. Some communities in France, the land of liberte, egalite et fraternite, have decided that the burkini is incompatible with the values of France. The bikini is now considered more consistent with French values. The burkini apparently threatens French secularism.

However, the bikini has not always illustrated French values. There is a 1957 photograph of a woman in a bikini who is being given a ticket by a policeman for her indecent attire.

A point of interest is that the woman who dons the burkini may still displease the more traditional Muslim males. This is because they would tell her that the profile of her body can be seen and thus her burkini is still not acceptable. She is caught between the “secularists” and the “religious.” Best that she dress as she wishes!

I would plead with the French to pay less attention to women’s clothing and instead deal with the far more serious issues that they have, including immigration, integration, discrimination and identity.

In Canada we are relatively tolerant and accepting of diversity, so that the hijab under the RCMP hat has now become part of the uniform. It became official policy this year. I think the reasoning is that if it does not impede safety or security and does no harm to the wearer or those around, then we can make these accommodations.

However, in Canada, there are some demands for accommodations that I think are unreasonable and to which we should not acquiesce.

The majority of Canadians are willing to accommodate issues around modesty of dress. but related to the attire of women is the demand for gender segregation. Enforced gender segregation as an extension of modesty should not be condoned by any of us, Muslims or non-Muslims. It can be damaging to both men and women.

In my view, that’s accommodation too far.

Why?  Gender segregation can also mean gender stereotyping. For example, women are seen as emotional, men as rational and also more highly sexed. Women, therefore – so goes the rationale – must hide their own sexuality and cover up so as not to “tempt” men. This is patriarchy at its worst, laying the blame and responsibility on women and girls.

There is a false assumption that gender segregation will protect men and women from licentiousness. I don’t think so!

How wise is Einstein: “If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.”

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Denying Quebec woman day in court because she was wearing of hijab went against Canadian law principles: judge

2016/10/08 Leave a comment

Surprised that the judge, while making the correct ruling in the particular case, refused to make a general ruling that wearing a hijab (or kippa, or turban) is permissible in court. Hard to understand what hypothetical situation he was thinking of:

Seventeen months after a Quebec Court judge told her to remove her hijab in court, Rania El-Alloul has received partial vindication from the justice system, but no guarantee it will not happen again.

In a ruling released this week, Superior Court Justice Wilbrod Décarie writes, “The court has a lot of sympathy for (El-Alloul) and deeply regrets how she was treated.”

Judge Eliana Marengo’s February 2015 refusal to hear El-Alloul in the “secular space” of a courtroom unless she removed her Muslim head scarf flew in the face of a 2012 Supreme Court of Canada decision that a witness was entitled to testify in a face-covering niqab, Décarie found.

But he did not issue the judgment sought by El-Alloul — declaring that her rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been breached and affirming her right to appear in court wearing her hijab.

“Each case is a specific case that has to be evaluated in the context of the witness’s court appearance,” Décarie wrote. “It cannot be declared in advance, absolutely and out of context, that El-Alloul will have the right to wear the hijab during her future appearances before the Court of Quebec. Nobody can predict the future.”

What happens next, I don’t know. I hope no one ever feels what I felt in the past

Julius Grey, one of El-Alloul’s lawyers, called Décarie’s finding “wrong in law and very dangerous.” It opens the door to litigants trying to destabilize a witness by filing motions asking she remove her hijab.

“A person will feel insecure before the courts,” Grey said, adding he favours an appeal.

The lawyer said the issue is important as restrictions on religious dress become more common.

“It’s not a particularly Quebec matter. All over the West there is an unhealthy irritation, I would say, with religious garb, with religious practice, with other customs,” Grey said.

Source: Denying Quebec woman day in court because she was wearing of hijab went against Canadian law principles: judge | National Post

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , , , ,

We’re All a Little Biased, Even if We Don’t Know It – The New York Times

2016/10/07 Leave a comment

Thanks to the VP debate, implicit bias has become the new political correctness term for the right. Good piece explaining what it is and is not.

As I have argued before, confronting implicit bias means becoming more mindful and aware, rather than just using automatic thinking:

“Senator, please,” Mr. Pence said, addressing his Democratic opponent, Tim Kaine, “enough of this seeking every opportunity to demean law enforcement broadly by making the accusation of implicit bias every time tragedy occurs.”

The concept, in his words, came across as an insult, a put-down on par with branding police as racists. Many Americans may hear it as academic code for “racist.” But that connotation does not line up with scientific research on what implicit bias is and how it really operates.

Researchers in this growing field say it isn’t just white police officers, but all of us, who have biases that are subconscious, hidden even to ourselves.

Implicit bias is the mind’s way of making uncontrolled and automatic associations between two concepts very quickly. In many forms, implicit bias is a healthy human adaptation — it’s among the mental tools that help you mindlessly navigate your commute each morning. It crops up in contexts far beyond policing and race (if you make the rote assumption that fruit stands have fresher produce, that’s implicit bias). But the same process can also take the form of unconsciously associating certain identities, like African-American, with undesirable attributes, like violence.

The science of how this submerged bias affects your actions is still a work in progress; studies have found a link between the biases and specific actions in some situations but not others. But because this bias is a function of universal human psychology, researchers say, we all experience it — and you can’t exactly get “rid” of it.

Well-intentioned people may also hold implicit biases that run counter to their stated values. That’s why it’s hard to square Mr. Pence’s description with the science. To broach implicit bias isn’t to impugn someone’s values; it’s to recognize that our values compete on an unconscious level with all the stereotypes we absorb from the world around us. And even black police officers aren’t immune to internalizing them.

“These types of cultural biases are like smog in the air,” Jennifer Richeson, a Yale psychologist, wrote in an email, citing an analogy often used by a former president of Spelman College, Beverly Daniel Tatum. “To live and grow up in our culture, then, is to ‘take in’ these cultural messages and biases and do so largely unconsciously.”

In the context of race, implicit bias is considered a particularly important idea because it acknowledges forces beyond bigotry that perpetuate inequality. If we talk less about it, as Mr. Pence suggested — this “really has got to stop,” he said Tuesday night — we lose vocabulary that allows us to confront racial disparities without focusing on the character of individual people.

“You’re removing the language that allows you talk about the mechanism of inequality,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, the president of the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a professor there. “If you take away that language, what that means is inequality gets stronger and justice gets weaker. It really gets that serious.”

Mr. Goff said he hears objections similar to Mr. Pence’s every time he gives presentations or leads training sessions with police departments. “Someone will say, ‘I’m tired of being called a racist,’ ” he said. To which he explains that racism and implicit bias aren’t interchangeable.

“That wrong formulation is so ingrained,” Mr. Goff said. “That’s what’s dangerous. It’s so easy to call it a slight, and if that metastasizes in our political discourse, we really have lost out on an incredible opportunity to take great strides forward.”

He fears that implicit bias could become a political trope, dismissed as an insult and not as science, or worse, tugged into the realm of political correctness. He acknowledges that the left mistreats the topic, too, citing implicit bias as a catchall to explain all the forces of racial unfairness in society that aren’t bigotry.

In fact, implicit bias is just one of many psychological processes that shape how we interact with one another. We also tend to be better at remembering the faces of people in our own racial group, or to subconsciously favor people in our group. The fear of being stereotyped psychologically weighs on people, too. In police training, Mr. Goff has watched officers using other kinds of mental shortcuts in which they assume “active shooters” must be men. He now talks more broadly about “identity traps” that encompass implicit biases and much more.

The challenge, he argues, isn’t to eliminate biases, but to try to interrupt them so we can act more often in ways that line up with our values. Researchers, though, still have a lot to learn about how to do that. And it would be unfortunate, Mr. Goff argued, if implicit bias became politically unmentionable right at the moment when science was trying to uncover the answer.

For now, laboratory simulations don’t easily translate to the real world, and it’s hard to convert beliefs into behaviors. It’s unclear how well nascent police training programs work. And police officers are not the only ones facing implicit-bias training — this fall, the home-sharing company Airbnb announced it planned to offer such a program to its hosts. It’s not clear that will work, either.

Tony Greenwald, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, said training can even backfire, as a result of another tendency we have: People who attend programs like these may falsely believe they’ve rooted out their biases and so don’t need to worry about them any more.

“Just wanting to eliminate implicit bias is not sufficient,” Mr. Greenwald said. “You can’t unlearn implicit biases. We live in a society and culture where the influences that create these are so strong and pervasive, that we’re not going to get rid of those influences in any short period.”

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with

Canadians think immigrants should do more to blend in; immigrants would do well: Tarek Fatah

2016/10/07 Leave a comment

Tarek Fatah on Canadian values and integration:

How else would 30 million Canadians offer three of the most liveable cities of the world – Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary – considering our large size and low population.

It’s our values and culture that makes us the envy of the world. What are those values that we wish all newcomers embrace, as we welcome them to become part of our family?

More than Canada being a liberal, secular democracy, newcomers find our embracing of the disabled, and the intellectually challenged a pleasant shock.

It’s also how we, over the years, have come to accept gays and lesbians as our sisters and brothers and live next to them as neighbours with who we chat, bake, help clear their snow despite the recognition that just a few decades ago this would not have been possible, but we did it.

Our cities are relatively safe; young women can jog late in the night without the fear of posses of young men taunting and throwing sexual epithets at them.

And then there is that colour bar and anti-black racism that has been largely defeated – even though we have miles to go before we rest.

If there is a nirvana, this is it.

However, this is our inheritance from generations gone before us and it is our duty to ensure these values and this culture does not get tarnished or diluted. Because there is still that awful disease that pushes newcomers into ideological, cultural, ethnic and religious ghettoes of old. Sad to say, anti-black racism still thrives in some corners, homophobia is still common in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the disabled are still viewed in many parts as a curse from the gods for sins committed by their parents. A visit to Uganda or Pakistan, Somalia or Saudi Arabia, will confirm those observations.

Source: Canadians think immigrants should do more to blend in; immigrants would do well

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

CBC-Angus Reid Institute poll: Canadian millennials hold off on their love of country

2016/10/06 Leave a comment

And this poll, showing young Canadians have less pride in Canada, again suggesting less local citizenship:

According to the results of a national polling partnership between CBC and the Angus Reid Institute, those aged 18 to 34 have a much cooler relationship to Canada than older Canadians.

Overall, the majority of Canadians polled said they were proud of Canada. Those 65 and over were the most proud, with 65 per cent saying they were very proud of Canada.

However, pride diminished with the age of the respondents. The poll revealed that only 40 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 said they were very proud of Canada.

“It’s a stark finding, and one that certainly jumps out and isn’t something we’ve seen before,” said Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute.

One possible reason for this changing relationship, Kurl said, is that a global technological revolution has made this generation more globally connected in real time than any previous group.

“This is the first generation of watching movies or TV from other parts of the world. It’s not just what they’re reading from a local newspaper but consuming from the internet, from the pipeline of communication and information that’s coming at them, and shaping their views and thoughts.”

Trust issues

But this “pipeline of information” has profound consequences for how millennials think and act.

A clue lies in another key finding in the poll.

While the majority of people over 34 said the news media do a good job presenting the facts, 64 per cent of those 18 to 34 said the opposite — that most of the stories you see in the news can’t be trusted.

Source: CBC-Angus Reid Institute poll: Canadian millennials hold off on their love of country – British Columbia – CBC News

Filed under Multiculturalism

Where is the love: How tolerant is Canada of its interracial couples?

2016/10/05 Leave a comment

Minelle Mahtani’s study of mixed couples:

Is love the last frontier of racial bigotry in Canada?

It’s a question that intrigues Minelle Mahtani, who has dared to ask whether interracial couples and their families still test the limits of tolerance in this country.In her recent book Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality in Canada, Mahtani, an associate professor in human geography and journalism at the University of Toronto Scarborough, questions whether we’ve not just put rose-coloured glasses on our multiculturalism, especially where mixed-race families are concerned.

While interracial relationships are on the rise in Canada (we had 360,000 mixed-race couples in 2011, more than double the total from 20 years earlier), the numbers remain slim. Just 5 per cent of all unions in Canada were between people of different ethnic origins, religions, languages and birthplaces in 2011, the last year Statistics Canada collected such data. That figure rises only marginally in urban areas: Just 8 per cent of couples were in mixed-race relationships in Toronto, 10 per cent in Vancouver.

How do people in interracial relationships experience that multiculturalism on the ground, when they introduce their boyfriends and girlfriends to family, or hold hands on a date? How do mixed-race families and their children feel about it, in their communities and in their schools?

Mahtani was the keynote speaker at last month’s Hapa-palooza, an annual festival celebrating mixed heritage in Vancouver, and she will present at the next Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference in California in February. She spoke with The Globe and Mail about the daily realities of mixed-race families.

How tolerant are Canadians of interracial relationships today?

It’s an early kind of euphoria around celebrating multiracialism in Canada. We’ve romanticized this notion far too quickly. All the numbers from Statistics Canada show that yes, we are seeing more interracial relationships, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the racism is decreasing. People who are in interracial relationships are still experiencing a lot of racism.

What kind of criticism do mixed-race people in this country still get for their dating choices?

So much depends on where the relationship is happening and the class background of the people who are getting involved. Even though there’s a greater tolerance of interracial relationships, some researchers talk about this as a kind of “repressive tolerance”: it’s not quite acceptance but a kind of toleration.

So many of the mixed-race people I interviewed spoke about the challenges that their own parents faced as interracial couples. We’re talking about kids whose parents met in the seventies and earlier when there was much more outright, blatant racism experienced by interracial couples.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/where-is-the-love-how-tolerant-is-canada-of-its-interracial-couples/article32206930/

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Facing opponents of an updated sex ed curriculum: Michael Coren

2016/10/04 Leave a comment

Coren on those opposed to Ontario’s updated sex-ed curriculum:

Recently I covered my second demonstration against Ontario’s new sex education curriculum. Standing outside of Queen’s Park were the usual suspects — fundamentalist Protestants speaking of “sodomites,” ultra-conservative Catholics disgusted at Pope Francis’ ostensible liberalism and various angry people holding clumsy posters. The last time I was here an Elvis Presley impersonator with a dog collar loudly condemned me from the platform. Not this day alas. Elvis had obviously left the building.

As bizarre as it may sound, this is serious stuff and has led to parents removing their children from school and even to the previous provincial government withdrawing this acutely necessary and entirely reasonable curriculum. So who are these perennially outraged men and women who think we’re all doomed and damned?

I know quite a few of them and their leaders; hardly surprising in that it’s always the same people and the same faces. One prominent regular is a leading anti-abortion campaigner who once made up and then spread the rumour that our youngest daughter, who was still at school at the time, was gay. She happens to be straight but her sexuality is irrelevant to us. Thing is, it was done to try to hurt her and by extension hurt me because I had become increasingly vocal in my support for same-sex marriage. The person in question is a devout Catholic.

Others were from a group who had worked successfully to have me fired as a columnist from a Christian newspaper because I had written that a 10-year-old Paraguayan girl raped by her stepfather had the right to an abortion. So, as I say, I know them well and they’re hardly representative of mainstream Canadian society.

Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of, their extremism these zealots do have a following. More than this, they are trying to co-opt minority communities — principally Chinese Christians and South Asian Muslims — into their coalition.

Their anchors are hysteria, paranoia, fear and ignorance. The apocryphal is wrapped up as established fact and what is gossip becomes ironclad information. At their demonstrations and in their literature they quote the curriculum severely out of context and speak of teachers — always unnamed — who are “perverting” children. There are frequent references to pedophilia and the smog of homophobia is seldom far away.

This latter point needs to be understood, because there has been a deliberate effort on the part of the antisex ed leadership to publicly, if not privately, play down or deny the anti-gay prejudice that was so prominent in earlier demonstrations and in their attitudes toward Kathleen Wynne.

While hardline evangelicals are part of the leadership, the central figures are traditionalist Roman Catholics who reject Pope Francis’ moves toward dialogue and have adopted Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea as their champion.

This senior cleric’s name is peppered on antisex ed websites and in their conversations. Sarah has denounced what he calls “Western homosexual and abortion ideologies” as being “demonic” and compared them to Nazism. He has described equal marriage as “part of a new ideology of evil” and supports African anti-gay laws, many of which are hideously punitive and lead to the arrest and assault of gay men and women. This is the reality of the antisex ed movement.

What the activists refuse to say is that it is not this particular curriculum they oppose but any attempt by the state to teach children realistically about sex and sexuality, and certainly any approach that embraces the full equality of the LGBTQ community. Many of them oppose birth control and virtually all of them vehemently oppose reproductive choice and premarital sex. This is not, as they claim, “ordinary parents defending their children.”

At the root of much of all this is a denial of sex as a loving, pleasurable, invariably harmless and entirely natural act. They don’t oppose sex in itself but view it primarily, if not exclusively, as a means of procreation rather than as a method of enjoyment. They also refuse to realize that children, even their children, will be and are sexually active. An acidic nostalgia for a time that never was.

Regrettably, the conversation is not over and neither is the opposition. As for the Elvis impersonator, I fear he will be back to sing again.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/10/03/facing-opponents-of-an-updated-sex-ed-curriculum.html

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →