A Homosexualist Conspiracy, Not
In the last weekend of May,
Conservative Party delegates from across Canada converged on
Vancouver to delete the party's traditional definition of marriage,
among other things. The proposal to delete the definition was
accepted by a vast majority of delegates – 1036 to 462 to be exact.
The proposal was originally written and introduced by a few young
heterosexuals, including Joseph Heap and Natalie Pon. Leading up to
convention, the proposal gained the support of LGBTory, a small group
of activists with minimal resources. In the days that followed the
convention and the successful policy change, deranged social
conservatives began coming out of the woodwork to attack the
supporting delegates and to spread misinformation.
Aside from the array of taunts and
threats on social media, more prominent critics started to claim that
homosexual activists and gay marriage proponents had unfairly
hijacked the convention in an attempt to liberalize the Conservative
Party. In an interview with the hyper-conservative American outlet,
OneNewsNow, the president of
Canada's Christian College, Charles McVety, said that LGBTory had
spent hundreds of thousands to pay delegates to attend the
Conservative convention and vote in support of the proposal.
“'They raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars,' he tells OneNewsNow. 'The fee to be a member of this
convention was $940, and they raised over $400,000 and paid for 400
delegates. The number of delegates was tiny, it was under 2000 –
and they didn't just take over the issue of marriage, they took over
this party.'
McVety says most of the Conservative
members of parliament weren't on board with the radical resolution,
but that the key leaders supported it out of a quest for political
correctness. But McVety says the people will eventually have their
say at the ballot box.” – OneNewsNow, June 2, 2016
I, personally, didn't realize the sheer
number of gay Conservative supporters until I attended a small LGBTory
event and the Fabulous Blue Tent gathering in Vancouver. I knew there
were gay conservatives in Canada who felt alienated by the big C
party's policy, but I had no idea the number of long-time gay
Conservatives was that high. With that said, 99% of the delegates who
supported the motion to delete the definition of traditional marriage
were not gay.
To address McVety's comments means
having to unravel a pile of false, uninformed nonsense. First, I
don't have access to party information to know whether McVety is
actually a Conservative member, but judging by his comments, it
doesn't look like he knows much about how conventions work. Second, a
large number of party members supported the policy change, including
a number of elected Conservative MPs. Third, McVety's comments on
LGBTory and their influence is greatly exaggerated.
To get all the way to national
convention, the marriage resolution had to make it through several
provincial votes and congresses. As an example, the resolution
passed the Conservative Alberta Congress with 88%. Once it made it to
national convention, it had to pass through a break-out workshop in
order to make it to plenary, which it did. Had LGBTory had the
resources to pull all this off on a national scale, they'd be running
the entire Milky Way galaxy. Delegates must also be party members for
a period of time before being eligible to participate in any party
conventions or congresses.
McVety's claim that LGBTory raised
$400,000 is completely false. There was no massive fundraising
efforts on their part and – at best – they raised less than
$2,000 and spent just under $750 all together at convention. The
opposing end of the gay marriage debate, known as Campaign For Life,
probably spent more and raised more. At the plenary debate, some self proclaimed social conservatives also
spoke in support of the new resolution. By the time all was said and
done, over 1000 delegates voted to support the resolution – many of
them without ever knowing about LGBTory beforehand. To most
Conservatives, LGBTory was nothing more than a Twitter account.
To give the new resolution a
counter-balance, delegates also supported the preservation of
religious freedom and the rights of religious groups to make their
own decisions. This measure seemed to sit well with most gay
conservatives and was part of the reason that so many social
conservatives supported the deletion of the party's definition of
marriage. At the end of the day, the Conservative Party didn't define
marriage, it merely dropped the traditional definition from its
policy. It was a small move with a big message.
As for supporting the resolution to
appease SJWs and to instill political correctness, McVety is grasping
at straws. Political correctness had nothing to do with dropping the
party's definition of marriage. Delegates who supported the
resolution wanted to eliminate the last barrier in the party's policy
that explicitly excludes a particular group of people – a group of
people who share a lot of the same values. The several MPs who
supported the resolution, like Jason Kenney, Michelle Rempel, Maxime
Bernier, Michael Chong and Kellie Leitch weren't doing so out of
political correctness, they were doing so to strengthen the party and
make it completely inclusive. To most of the MPs, it was about
reasserting Conservative values like individual liberty.
There was no coup or conspiracy to
hijack the Conservative Party. People who supported the resolution
were loosely knit and most of them had never met each other. By the
end of convention, many of the delegates who supported the resolution
still hadn't met one another. Over 1000 strangers converged in one
building and deleted the party's definition of marriage. They weren't
paid to be there and all of them were party members. Whether or not
any of them were reptilian shapeshifters from the fourth dimension is
still up for debate.
