Woman in Comfy Shoes: September 2006

When all else fails, play the homo card

Everywhere I click on Ted Morton's Alberta PC leadership campaign website, it just gets worse.

Among other things, he wants to:
- have a "made-in-Alberta immigration policy" (any ideas what that could mean?)
- create an Alberta Provincial Police and Alberta Pension Plan
- Allow private health insurance
- Allow private clinics to deliver some services
- "Provide marketing choice for grain farmers" [so in good years they can skip the Canadian Wheat Board]

He's a Reform Party Senator-in-Waiting

According to a collection of articles and news releases from his campaign website:

He was Stockwell Day's policy advisor.

At a bear pit session atthe Alberta Weekly Newspaper Association’s fall convention in Calgary, September 15, he is reported to have "proposed some interesting ways to attract labour to Alberta by stopping transfer payments to provinces where there are no jobs."

None of this is really exciting enough to get anybody in the Alberta PC party but policy wonks hot and bothered, but fortunately he has an ace in the hole: the homo card. He's been harping on that one since at least April, when he introduced a private member's bill to "protect freedom of speech and religion via Bill 208 for those who support traditional marriage".

He argues that "Tolerance is a two-way street. Bill 208 will ensure that the traffic keeps moving in both directions."

So gay and lesbian Albertans, in other words, can exist in public, but the people who want to push them back into the closet have every right to try.

Now that he's in the spotlight for this leadership race, he and the Edmonton Faith Coalition for Natural Marriage are getting out in the media with such brilliant, original and valid arguments as:

it is essential that the government consider the rights of children, because they're the most vulnerable in our society

same-sex marriage is not a basic human right, but rather it's a social experiment ... there is no charter of rights in the world that recognizes homosexual marriages

Not to mention the eponymous fallacy in the name of the Coalition for Natural Marriage.

Or the verging-on-theocracy statements the Edmonton Faith Coalition for Natural Marriage were making before they were part of a leadership campaign:

The scriptures of all participating faiths "indicate that marriage is a sacred thing between a man and a woman and we feel it ought to be kept that way," said coalition member Garry Rohr, representative of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada Alberta District.

Marriage is (between) one man and one woman open to procreation and that's the way the human race started.

So I have an idea what's going to be wrong with Alberta shortly... Vote for keeping the homos out of public life, Get (...)

And on top of that, the colour scheme of his website's splash screen is the same as that villain from Sin City.

Waah, no Sunshine Girl

And the poor widdle mens is cwying. More than 1400 distraught readers called or emailed to complain. The Sunshine Girl was back the next day.

Never mind that the Sunshine Boy disappeared over a year ago, was way in the back (instead of opposite the opinion columns), was in black and white, and was maybe a quarter the size of the Sunshine Girl.

Reasons cited for the disappearance of the Sunshine Boy include lack of reader interest plus, according to longtime Sunshine Boy photographer Veronica Henri, "It was hard to get good-looking guys." She goes on to explain that

It wasn't considered "prestigious" to be a SSB, and most of the prospects preferred to wear suits. Women [...] are socialized to show off their bodies. "Men aren't brought up like that."

And people say we don't need feminism any more because women are already equal.