Harper’s motion made him no friends

With the Dec 7 vote in Parliament that saw Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s motion to reopen the same-sex marriage issue going down to defeat, 175 to 123, the King Kong gates of homosexual depravity busted wide open, and just in time for Christmas. The monstrous ape of same-sex marriage roared his message of social doom.

Go forth, ye pink, frilly stewardesses of Satan, ye same-sex married mob of infamy! Go forth, burst into the heterosexual homes and lick all the chocolates in their Dairy Boxes! Share your Asspig.com password with their easily converted teenaged boys! Nab their tubby little husbands and take them behind the snow blower in the garage! Advance, ye snowy infantry of sin! Attack! Attack! Attack!

Ah, mayhem. Just in time for a sour-faced Christmas, conservative letter writers to the National Post had their tongues down their own throats, choking in outrage. Khem Harrinarine of Toronto wrote: “Same-sex marriage is just an indication of the times that we are living in. Canada is on [a] moral slippery slope…. We can see the introduction of more laws that run contrary to Canadian traditions.” Ray Hickin of Chilliwack wrote: “I hardly expect anyone to notice any change as our politically correct society spurs us onto a path of self-destruction.”

But it was C Lutz of Haliburton who really fingered the national prostate: “There is sadness here in Canada, but assuredly joy in the camp of Hassan Nasrallah, general secretary of Hezbollah, who, on the heels of the Lebanon war, said that hedonism is sure to bring the downfall of Western society.”

There you have it. A stolid pair of lesbians in Penningtons blazers shuffle into city hall to exchange rings in front of members of their curling team and it’s the end of Western society.

This all began with last winter’s federal election campaign, during which Harper promised that he would reopen the same-sex marriage issue, which had only just squeaked through in a tumultuous free vote during the previous Parliament. When the Tories came to power a friend warned me that it was to be the end of all homosexuality. “He’s like Bush; he believes in the Rapture,” he said.

Untutored in the spectacle of religion, I thought he was talking about a basketball team. But it turns out the Rapture is something to do with the end of the world, at which time Christians fly to heaven like untethered blimps while the rest of us hug the tarmac and burn. (My friend also happens to believe that Frank and Gordon, the Bell Canada beavers, are same-sex lovers. After watching them squabble and buying a lot of Bell shit, I started to believe him.)

But no, it turns out that Stephen Harper is not rapturous, but actually a cunning political pragmatist. He said he would reopen the issue in a campaign promise and he kept his word. Just how fervently, how forcefully was another matter. After the definitive Dec 7 vote — Liberals and Conservatives were allowed to vote freely, with 13 on each side voting against their peers — Harper’s conclusion was crisp, even rushed: “I don’t see reopening this question in the future.”

And that was that. A sigh of relief from some of our more respectable friends, that better class of homosexual, the good-address boys who feared their marriage certificates would become as worthless as last year’s angling permit. One plumply smug couple told my lover of 20 years that he and I are just “living in sin” because we have no intention of getting married like they had.

I’m sure that there are plenty of same-sex couples who marry for good reasons, but the insecure ones like the pair mentioned above who need a city hall clerk’s rubber-stamp of approval on their love are troublesome. They show the telltale ringworm of moral superiority. How long before the Franks and Gordons of the gay world warn that jabbering Hezbollah warriors will storm Canada all because Steamworks is offering lunch specials?

Same-sex marriage doesn’t invite the end of Western society. This colonial imitation of heterosexuality merely sustains its puffy feet and clogged arteries.

So what was it really all about, that Dec 7 vote? What was Harper up to? Was he sending a signal that he believes in social conservatism but not enough to risk chances of reelection, this time with a majority government? Or was it a brave stand of principle against the abomination of homosexuality? Neither, actually.

In the end what it was really all about was Harper conning his own constituency — religious conservatives — into voting for him. He’d learned from the first battle, in 2004, that same-sex marriage was an issue that very few Canadians actually care much about and thus not worth the loss of political capital. This last vote acquitted him of an election promise to hold a vote. We were vindicated, the fundos were defeated. They have a right to be outraged. They were bought off and then sold out by their own boy.