Pride goeth before a fall

How about a side of homophobia with your conservative politics?

Minister of State for Tourism Diane Ablonczy is no longer responsible for the delivery of a key tourism stimulus package, and one of her caucus colleagues says it's because her office gave some of the money to a gay pride parade.

Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost, a fellow Conservative, told the anti-abortion website LifeSiteNews that Ablonczy was being punished for the decision to give $400,000 from the Marquee Tourism Events Program to Toronto's Pride Parade, which was held this year on June 28.

Trost was quoted as calling it "a very isolated decision" that was not supported "by a large majority of the MPs."

<SNIP>

Helen Kennedy, the executive director of the gay rights group Egale, called the incident "shocking."

She pointed out that the money was used to increase accessibility for people with disabilities who wanted to enjoy the parade, and also helped improve the quality of live entertainment at the 10-day festival.

"This minister, instead of being applauded for injecting much-needed cash into the local economy here in Toronto, is being penalized and punished," she told CBC News.

She said Trost's comments may point to an anti-gay bias.

"I would ask, is he in fact, homophobic?… Why is it troubling to him that $400,000 is being used by Pride Toronto to improve access for people with disabilities? Did he in fact make the same comments about $2 million going into the Calgary Stampede?"

Regular readers of Broadsides are familiar with LifeSite News as I am perpetually trashing its anti-woman agenda.

Today it even carried a story on the ''pro-life hero'' Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife, Brazil. He's the archbishop who excommunicated the mother and doctors of a 9 year old, pregnant with twins after a rape, because they sought to give the child an abortion.

So it figures that LifeSite would be just the place a homophobic conservative would go.

David Akin has more:

Conservative MP Brad Trost said Ablonczy was removed from the file because of her decision to fund Pride Week, which its organizers say, is to "celebrate the history, courage, diversity and future of Toronto's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersex, queer, questioning, two-spirited" communities.

Trost was critical of Ablonczy for making that decision.

"The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy," Trost said in article published Tuesday at LifeSiteNews.com. "Canadian taxpayers, even non-social conservative ones, don't want their tax dollars to go to events that are polarizing, or events that are more political than touristic in nature."

Trost attributed the decision to fund the gay pride event to his own government's "sloppiness."

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Dave Quist, a former political aide to Stephen Harper and now executive director of The Institute for Family and Marriage, said his group was disappointed that a Conservative government, just like governments before them, approved funding for the event.

"We would find the funding of Pride Week anywhere controversial," said Quist. "It's not a family-friendly event. It doesn't espouse family values that I would support, so the funding of events like that, I would have problems with."

Again, as I have noted before, The Institute for Family and Marriage is a right-wing organization in Ottawa which is linked to some pretty out there groups in the US.

Which is another reason why all this stinks to, appropriately enough, high heaven.

The thing is, Gay Pride is not only a celebration of human rights and diversity, it brings countless tourist dollars to Toronto.

I can't figure out what the Harpies hate more, lesbians and gays or Toronto.

More reading over at Big City Lib who had it all first (I believe) and Kady's place.

Star staff photo by Ian Willms.

Comments

[neko]

I'm a Conservative and this made me sick.

Pride is fantastic fun and even if the event isn't your cup of tea, it brings so much money into the city! I'm all about not wasting tax dollars but I cannot see the waste here. Tourism = $. It's not like every citizen in the City, the GTA or the Province is forcibly shuttled to the parade and forced to watch. Don't like it, don't go.

I first read about this over at the NationalPost and was disgusted by the comments. It seems that it isn't about Christianity or Homophobia. The commentors say it's about the 'public orgy' that is Pride. Having attended every parade for 6 years running, I would really like to know where this orgy is and what street is found afterwards "littered" with condoms, lube and plugs. As much fun as Pride is, I think the orgy would be even more fun and totally want in on that action.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

"I'm a Conservative ....."

Wow. Neko-san. Me too, on some level. Big tent party indeed, including the two of us.
(though I hope you don't mean the "Progressive Conservative" nonsense).

And Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator

"I can't figure out what the Harpies hate more, lesbians and gays or Toronto."

You might be horrified if you dig deeper.

[neko]

I define my political leanings by $, Stygian. I earned it and I want to keep it. I'm willing to pay for communal stuff that benefits us all, like infrastructure, hospitals, etc. But what people do with their bodies and their lives is their own concern. Most folk I know who vote conservative (most of them family...) think along the same lines.
If that's progressive, then I suppose that's what I am... but last time I looked, 'progressive' meant silly Mr. Tory promising to spend my money on faith-based schools and that was nuts on so many levels.

[tim gueguen]

It's no surprise some people would think a gay pride parade would be nothing but wall to wall sex. After all for all too many people their image of a gay man is of a person obsessed with sex. The idea that the feared "other" is sexually voracious is incredibly common for some reason.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Neko-San,

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3689038/if-anything-this-result-understates-the-support-for-the-bnp.thtml

"The first act of Doncaster’s mayor was to withdraw council funding for a gay pride march — a decision which horrified the London media and political elite but which was, I suspect, supported by about 85 per cent of the British people. Why should local people fund a march by homosexuals telling everybody that they’re glad they are homosexuals? If they are that glad about it, can’t they pay for it themselves?"

OK, Toronto is one of the citadels of political correctness, and full of such "Conservatives" as the late, great, Sam Francis dubbed "beautiful losers", but perhaps the CPC is realising that there is a huge, untapped vote out there......

And it would be smart politics on the CPC's part to cater to the Canadian equivalent of the 85% referred to in the above article. How many critics of the decision to remove Diane Ablonczy from that file would never have voted CPC anyway? And those of us who thrilled to her seeing off NACSOW when she was a Reform MP are disappointed in what she's become ....