Fete Accompli

Once again the PM missed attending the party of the year;

Hundreds of thousands flock to TO Pride Parade

Instead he was feted in Quebec, as he feted Quebec Nationalism.

Huge parade, concerts and fun mark Quebec's Fete nationale holiday

Huge papier mâché statues of the great builders of Quebec were among the flags and marching bands in a boisterous parade yesterday that marked Quebec's Fête Nationale provincial holiday. An image of former premier René Lévesque was featured along with that of explorer Samuel de Champlain in the march.

The links between Levesque, a sovereigntist icon, and the celebration of the Fete nationale were obvious to Yvon Trudel, who marched in the parade with the nationalist Mouvement Quebec Francais.

"It represents the future - the future country that we want," he said when asked what the day meant to him.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Roberval, Que., where he praised the contribution of Quebecers to building Canada.

"The first people in this country to call themselves Canadians were the French-speaking settlers who built their first community on the banks of the St. Lawrence then followed our rivers to places like Lac St-Jean and then across our land envisioning a country from sea to sea," he said.

And my how times have changed .

It was a far cry from the days when riots plagued Fete nationale. in 1968, Pierre Trudeau won a majority government the day after he stared down rioters at a St-Jean Baptiste Day parade in Montreal.

For Harper Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgendered Canada is more of a threat than Quebec Separatism.

Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal have been named Canada's five top gay-friendly tourist destinations by an American magazine.

One challenges his machismo the other embraces it.


SEE:

Harpers Legacy

Avoiding The Issue

Some Same Sex Marriage Ok Say Tories

Harper Gaffe #2: SSM

Intolerant Blogging Tories

Mortons Homophobia Rebuked

Harper

SSM

Same Sex Marriage


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A Tale Of Two Canada's

Hundreds of thousands flock to TO Pride Parade


Canadian Anglicans vote no on blessing same-sex unions




See

Whose Family Values?

Marx on Bigamy

Paul Goodman

Libertarianism

Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me

Gay Marriage

SSM

Same Sex Marriage


Tags
Canada, gay, lesbian, homosexual, Same Sex Marriage, SSM, marriage, Christian, Conservatives, Stephen Harper, PM, Canadian Government, GLBT, LGBT, parliament, right-wing, social conservatives, MP, free-vote,

Kettle Pot Pace

Onward Christian Soldiers.

Gen. Pace Calls Homosexuality Immoral

And killing people is moral?

And it gets better;

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral,

So I guess that leaves Newt out of the army. And Karl Rove.

"I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay soldiers to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Heck I guess that means the U.S. military won't accept any divorced folks in their ranks. Nope that ain't true.

The Pentagon Thursday sought support for Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's choice to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff - a general officer who has admitted committing adultery - but the battle quickly widened into an effort to convince the public that the military was not applying a double-standard on sexual infractions. One day after the Pentagon's disclosure that Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston conducted an adulterous affair more than a decade ago, officials sought to explain how in different circumstances such relationships could put some service members in jail and others in retirement while not eliminating one - Ralston - from candidacy for the armed forces' most coveted post.
Los Angeles Times June 6, 1997.

Or folks who have stolen post it notes from the office supplies.

I thought the U.S. Military swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States not the Ten Commandments. Wait a minute there is no condemnation of homosexuality in the Ten Commandments.....


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Valentines Day Challenge

Valentines Day is the most overt expression of heterosexuality in our culture. The assumption made is that your sweetie is a member of the opposite sex. All of the commercial cultural products are aimed with this assumption in mind.

So as I picked up my obligatory card and gifts for my sweetie, from me and the cats and dogs, hmm, I wondered; what about gay and lesbian couples?

I saw no cards for Mary and Alice or Adam and Steve. No his and his flowers or her and her chocolates. And then I came across this posting at Alternet;

We in the gay and lesbian community understand coming out, but I've found that coming out isn't easy for some heterosexual folks to understand. They still think, but WHY do you NEED to come out?

To answer that, I have a challenge for you: This Valentine's Day, don't indicate to anyone all day what the gender of your sweetie is. Evade. When people ask, "What are you doing this evening?" Say, "I'm having dinner with a someone special," or, "My partner and I are seeing a movie." Some people will assume that the person you reference is of the opposite sex. Some people may think you are in a same-sex relationship. How do you feel about that? How do you think gay and lesbian people feel?

Since I regularly use the term 'my partner' rather than wife, I understand the phenomena. Though in the labour movement and in other progressive circles this term is used more often than the term husband or wife so I am used to it being sexual orientation neutral, and being an acceptable practice.

I used partner long before it was socially acceptable, being an anarchist and coming as it does from the anarchist tradition of Free Love referring to ones lover as companiero, companion,comrade, or close friend, showing that we are partners not property of each other.

Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshine
Anarchist activists who were in their 80’s at the time of these interviews (both are now deceased). Steimer, defendant in the celebrated “Abrams Case” (one of the most important civil liberties cases in US legal history, it was the first important prosecution under the 1918 Espionage Act. The Supreme Court upheld the convictions of Steimer and her comrades, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachovsky, and Jacob Schwartz, for giving out leaflets protesting American intervention in Soviet Russia.). She was deported from the United States to the Soviet Union in 1921.

There, she met Senya Fleshine, then secretary to Emma Goldman (also an immigrant to the United States, he had not been deported to the Soviet Union, but had hurried back when the revolution broke out. He participated in the historic attack on the Winter Palace, and was acquainted with the Ukrainian anarchist general, Makhno.) . Steimer and Fleschine became “companieros”, and lived together for the next 60 years, although several times separated by war, revolution, and imprisonment. In 1923, they were both deported from the Soviet Union for their anarchist activities and protests against authoritarian rule. They lived in various places in Europe (mostly in Paris), until Nazism forced them to flee to Mexico in 1940, and where they stayed until the ends of their lives. Senya became a nationally-known photographer, assisted in his photographic studio by Mollie, under the name of “Semo” (orSenya-Mollie).





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Prove You Are Gay

File this under Catch 22. You are only gay if you can prove you have had gay sex. Unless you have had gay sex you are not gay.

Wait a minute what about heterosexuals who are celibate or abstain till marriage. How do we know they are really straight?

Only someone from Brokeback Alberta, homophobic home to closeted cowboys, could come up with this logic.

"The (refugee) judge just didn't think I was gay enough and I didn't qualify to be gay."

IRB adjudicator Deborah Lamont, who heard the case from Calgary via videoconference, questioned his lack of same-sex relationships while he lived in the U.S.

"I found the claimant's many explanations unsatisfactory for why he chose not to pursue same-sex relationships in the U.S. as he alleged it was his intention to do so and he wanted to do so," she wrote in her decision.

Instead, she concluded: "...he is not a homosexual... and fabricated the sexual orientation component to support a non-existent claim for protection in Canada."

Gee and how was he supposed to PROVE he had gay sex.

And if he did would it end up on Fox News; Boys willingly submitted to rape according to O’Reilly

See

homosexual

gay

immigration

refugee



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SheHe Rights

The authorities in Nepal have granted a man who dresses and behaves as a woman both male and female citizenship.

The unprecedented legal status was given to 40-year-old Chanda Musalman.

Conservative and religious Nepal, like many Asian countries, has a sizeable community of people who are born male but behave as women.

It is unclear how this unique legal status will play out in practice - for instance, how it will affect Chanda's marriage rights.

Nepal has a community of men identifying themselves as women


Nepal is not the only country that has communities of men who are transexual/transgendered or women for that matter, it is a universal phenomena.

But this is a postive blow for human rights, which have been denied to Transexuals in Canada.

Gender bending is as old as humanity and is reflected in the traditions of magick and shamanism.

It is disturbing to conservative moralists because it shows that gender is a social construct.


Also See:

Metrosexual

Gay

Homosexuality

Queer

Sexuality

Gender

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Gay Marriage and Adoption

Diogenes Borealis, a Blogging Tory, has an excellent Libertarian, yes libertarian, post on the controversy over gay rights in Britain and Canada. In which he correctly points out the difference between public services, and publicly funded organizations and those of privately funded organizations. Gay marriage & adoption - some libertarian thoughts

Which reminded me of the Delwin Vriend affair in Alberta, where the Christian Reform Church Kings University College, fired him because he was gay. Kings College accepted public funding for students and state accreditation as a post secondary institution. Despite their claims that they were a 'private' institution,and claiming they were firing him for religious reasons.
Can't have it both ways as Diogenes points out.

And of course it should never have gone to the Supreme Court, because it was a violation of his rights, and the Alberta Government failed to represent those rights (his case was against the Government not the College), but Social Conservatives are NOT libertarians.


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