Capital Xtra, serving Ottawa's LGBT community, published this article by reporter Laura Mueller this week on the referendum debate.
Here's an excerpt:
"Despite the doom and gloom perspective extolled by critics of MMP, history has shown that minority governments have been good for queer rights — a Liberal-NDP coalition added sexual orientation to the Ontario Human Rights Code in 1986. And let's not forget that minority governments at the federal level gave us universal health care, old-age pensions, and unemployment insurance among other popular legislation.
"Nathan Hauch, longtime political activist, says that minority governments limit the ability of social conservatives to scale back gay rights.
"The politics of divide and conquer, which can have very negative ramifications for [queer] voters, will be far less attractive for political elites" in minority governments, says Hauch."
2 comments:
Hmmm. Honestly, I personally don't feel my rights are threatened remotely by Stephen Harper or John Tory. I think they're cooler than my mom and dad are when it comes to gay issues, really. I'm pretty sold on MMP, but this doesn't convince me any further - I'm more interested in bigger issues than gay rights, despite making out with boys constantly. Still, interesting article to post.
I don't think my rights are threatened by John Tory, I agree. But I have zero confidence in Stephen Harper who just two years ago called equal marriage a threat to a multicultural Canada. He's been trying to portray himself as moderate, but he's really a chameleon. His agenda is to win a majority and the only way to do that is to appear moderate. If for some reason he won a majority, I'd be very frightened, as would a lot of Canadians. Harper is no moderate, nor is the majority his Conservative Party, most of whom used to be the Reform Party, and most of whom still voted against SSM recently. I'd prefer no conservative majorities based on 40% of the vote...
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