Welcome to Well, That Sucked, our weekly compendium of exactly what it sounds like. Thrown in this week’s garbage: reasonable attitudes that even halfway-not-evil people should be able to get behind, for god’s sake.
There is an understandable knee-jerk reaction—somewhere between face-palming mortification and diaper-filling dread—that accompanies the news that a member of our Conservative government has spoken, in public, about gay rights. Oh, do tell, what fresh hell will come tumbling out of the gaping maw of some puffy, oil-slicked dinosaur today?
And yet, this time, not only was it absent of any overt malice, it was actually … kind of nice. Last week, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said that he had tried to convince the Russian government not to go forward with a widely denounced anti-gay law that would ban gay pride rallies and so much as providing information about gay issues to minors.
What a logical, reasoned reaction to an unfair law, said most of us. I am glad my government is making actual attempts to do good things around the world.
And then—why is there always an “and then”?—some batshit crew of misanthropic pinochle enthusiasts that your friend’s weird mom probably belongs to (you know the one, always frowning at you because your mom let you use a computer for reasons other than organizing funeral pickets) begged to differ.
REAL Women of Canada—which wonderfully, gloriously stands for Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life—is not, as I’d hoped, a national coalition of pleasure dolls thisclose to gaining terrible sentience, but rather a conservative organization rallying around “traditional family and marriage.” This week, they released a statement on their website reprimanding Baird for his stance on international anti-gay laws. You will be shocked and disheartened to learn that it is not entirely accurate.
“He argues that homosexual rights are a ‘Canadian value,’ but this applies only to himself and his fellow activists and the left-wing elitists,” writes Vice-President/Grand Wizard Gwendolyn Landolt.
Her letter begins: “Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, has abused his position as a cabinet minister to impose his own special interest in the foreign countries of Uganda, Kenya and Russia.” Okay, stop right there.
Are you meaning to tell me that this deviant Baird, this supposed minister of FOREIGN affairs, is trying to impose his will on FOREIGN countries to prevent gay people from being murdered in the streets? With my tax dollars? Who does he think he is, the minister of foreign affairs?
“It is a fact,” the letter continues, “that homosexual activists in Canada are intolerant of any resistance to their demands, and, as such, have become tyrannical minorities.”
Look, we live in a dangerous world. Tornadoes. Nuclear weapons. Winter is coming. Why not fortify ourselves against the well-documented tyranny of minorities while we still have a fighting chance? It’s always the same with them—don’t-kill-us this, that’s-our-land that. Where’s the justice? Do I not also have to eat? Just take a look through history: How often have the wills of the members of the smallest, weakest constituency brutally overtaken and dominated all others? Always. They have always done that. Every time. And now it’s happening again. History.
The letter proceeds in similar fashion, more rambling by garbage-brained stooges who think gay people have nothing better to do than lure children to their gingerbread-and-gumdrop homes only to plop them into bubbling cauldrons. I have plenty of gay friends. You know how many own cauldrons? Like, ten percent, tops. It’s always a joy to watch people who wouldn’t know persecution if it were keeping them from visiting their dying spouse in the hospital rally to maintain their right to bigotry.
What’s most disappointing is that the minister’s office actually offered to meet with REAL Women to clarify its position. Come on. Is the government really compelled to sit down with every cretin who has the time and energy and manual dexterity to write a press release? Because, if that’s the case, then I, too, have an email address and a website, and I have a couple bones to pick with Stephen Harper about this so-called War of 1812. (See? All that advertising worked! I now know that the War of 1812 is a thing that happened. Totally paid off.)
Well, That Sucked appears every Friday.
