Found at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint/Defend_full_equality_-_drive_out_the_Harper_Conservatives.html
Defend full equality -
drive out the Harper
Conservatives
(The
following article is from
the July 1-31,
2007
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in
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ON, L8P 2H3.)
Pride
2007
Statement from the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist
League of Canada
Together
with
our allies at
dozens of Pride events across Canada this summer, lesbians, gays,
bisexuals, trans, two-spirited persons, and queer and questioning youth
are celebrating important struggles to achieve equality and social
justice. These events are refreshing and important demonstrations of
the kind of unity which is essential to all the progressive movements
of Canada.
It's just
this kind of unity
which is required if we are to block an insidious right-wing agenda
intent on promoting hatred and divisions among us. The Communist Party
of Canada lends its enthusiastic and full support to queer and all
progressive struggles. We send our best greetings to all those
taking
part in LGBTT Pride events.
We all know
that the gains of
recent years for LGBTT communities will face dramatically sharper
challenges if Stephen Harper were to win the next federal election.
Although the corporate-controlled media wants Canadians to believe that
Harper and his cohorts have "mellowed" and have retreated from their
hardline positions against LGBTT workplace equity, legal equality and
reproductive rights, they actually pose a direct threat to the future
of Canada, including our advances toward social equality.
While key
sectors of big business
(both domestic and global capital), argue that the Conservatives need a
majority "to make Parliament work", it is very clearly time to drive
out the Conservatives.
Alarmingly,
Harper and his
advisers are already shifting many policies, through quiet
administrative moves and by their dangerous drive towards "deep
integration" with the United States. To improve his electoral chances,
Harper is keeping a lid on outspoken MPs, but this is a waiting game
and will end if he wins a majority. The election of an even larger
number of fundamentalist, bigoted MPs would dramatically enhance the
power of the minority who want to restore the patriarchal nuclear
family as the only "acceptable" family model.
Stephen
Harper's personal
anti-equality positions are clear. He has voted against every piece of
same-sex marriage legislation. He has pledged that a Conservative
government would not raise the abortion issue "in its first term" -
leaving his options open if re-elected. Last summer he snubbed the
international AIDS conference held in Toronto.
And most
Canadians have noticed a deluge of danger signals from the Tories:
* proposals to give authorities wide
access to monitor phone calls and email
* the new "no-fly" list and other
violations of civil liberties
* the expansion of CSIS and the RCMP
(which both have a history of homophobia)
* the appointment of anti-choice,
anti-gay judges to provincial courts;
* the presence of "Focus on the
Family" zealots within the top circles of Tory advisors
* the so-called "Defence Of Religion
Act" to allow wider promotion of hatred
* tax changes to promote the
patriarchal family model
* the moves to gut Status Of Women
Canada
* the end of government funding to
promote equality
* legislation to criminalize youth by
raising the age of consent from 14 to 16
* regulations to limit young people's
access to condoms and abortions.
The Harper
and Tory positions
reveal that homophobia remains a powerful force within the Canadian
state, despite the cultural and legal shift in favour of equality and
diversity. Police and prosecutors are still reluctant to press for
stiffer punishments against those who commit homophobic hate crimes,
raids on gay bathhouses continue, and Canada Customs is still seizing
literature ordered by bookstores which serve the LGBTT community.
Homophobic regulations against blood donors remain in place.
And there are
many other important issues being raised this summer, such as:
* the need for stronger action to
defend the rights of queer and questioning youth by pressing
politicians, school trustees, administrators and teachers to follow the
example of those across the country who have shown strong leadership.
Queer youth and students still face prevailing heterosexist attitudes,
harassment, and even homophobic violence despite the welcome growth of
gay-straight alliances in schools.
The urgency
of more school boards
taking positive and systemic steps towards protecting LGBTT students
and staff in the face of resistance at every level (note the B.C.
Liberal government's recent vote against a proposal to include an
anti-homophobia clause in a "school conduct codes" bill.
* the conscious targeting of immigrant
and religious communities by groups which spread hatred. The use of the
so-called "war on terror" to promote "racial profiling" to strip away
civil liberties for the Muslim and Arab communities in North America.
* the need to act on the concept that
"an injury to one is an injury to all" with the knowledge that our
democratic freedoms can only be protected by standing together, united
in our diversity against hatred and war.
* our fight to defeat those who would
turn back the clock, such as candidates whose nominations are backed by
fundamentalist groups and their aim to turn Parliament into a weapon
against reproductive rights and LGBTT equality while serving corporate
interests, destroying democratic rights, rolling back gender equality,
gutting social programs, privatizing all public assets and splintering
the public school system, in their drive for profits. (Note that in the
name of "traditional family values," such candidates are adopting the
U.S. Republican strategy of using "wedge issues" to promote the
politics of hatred.)
Like racism,
sexism, and national
chauvinism, homophobia and transphobia are weapons used by ruling
classes to divide working people across Canada. Unfortunately,
even
within our labour and people's movements much more work is needed to
ensure that defending the rights of LGBTT members and citizens is a
priority, not an afterthought. The good news is that a growing and
clear majority, especially younger Canadians, support full equality
rights. The key to our progress will lay in building broad coalitions
committed to fighting for a genuine People's Alternative to this
neo-liberal agenda, based on unity between labour and our people's
movements of youth and students, women, seniors, environmentalists,
peace activists, our LGBTT community, aboriginal people,
immigrants
and other racialized communities, farmers and very many others.
Ultimately,
this kind of wider
social struggle will lead us all towards full social
emancipation.
Achieving genuine people's power in a future socialist Canada, will
allow us to build an economy which is both socially owned and
democratically controlled; to eliminate all forms of exploitation and
oppression; to defend our sovereignty and protect the environment; to
ensure that hatred and bigotry become relics of the past; to create a
society in which, as Karl Marx wrote, "the free development of each is
the condition for the development of all."