Winnipeg Free Press, Canada
Sept 20 2009
Thoughts on Gay-gate
20/09/2009 10:30 AM
Stu Murray, the former head of the provincial Tories and the new boss
of the Canadian Human Rights Museum is having a rough start in his new
job. He’s come under fire from gay and lesbian groups for voting
against extending adoption rights back in the day, and not having a
particularly well-prepared explanation for how that jibes with being
an international advocate for human rights. In a speedy bit of damage
control, it sounds like Murray and the human rights museum folks are
meeting ASAP with anyone remotely gay to smooth things over, as well
they should.
I think Murray made it pretty clear then and now that he personally
supports gay rights — though, in a nifty interview by CBC Radio’s
Margaux Watt the other day, he refused to say how he’d vote if he had
the chance again today. But the whole episode makes me think three
things:
1.Murray was not well briefed. He should have had a clever and
decisive reply to the gay rights question, because it was
inevitable. And he should have had a better answer to the "what
experience do you have in the human rights field" question. His answer
to that one amounted to: I lived near a reserve and went to Israel
once.
2.When it comes right down to it, Murray got into this pickle not
because he doesn’t know what’s right but because he didn’t lead. He
personally favoured gay rights but caved to the rest of his more
conservative caucus and party base that didn’t. Instead, he should
have recognized, as most governments and courts in Canada had started
to, that gay rights are not only laid out in the Charter but,
politically, voting against them doesn’t help establish you as
anything other than a backwater party with no hope of winning in
Winnipeg. Murray should have whipped his caucus, the way one imagines
Doer does on issues that matter. If he couldn’t manage that, how is he
going to manage when the Turks are REALLY MAD about a exhibit on the
Armenian genocide?
3.If any New Democrats out there are taking any glee in this whole
debacle, I’d like to remind you of your party’s mealy-mouthed record
on gay rights. You only extended pension and death benefits to gays
because the Supreme Court told you to. You only let gays adopt because
you got an avalanche of criticism from inside and outside your party
(and reportedly, a threat by openly-gay cabinet minister Jim Rondeau
to resign). So no gloating.
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