Okay, okay, I’ve said before that I mock political incompetence and openly roast authoritarian assholes, and that the right-wing happens to attract the largest degrees of those. Today I make good on my promise and mock some bonafide British Columbian Liberal fucktardery, and not even of the hippie “mraaah chemicals bad” variety.
BC has (finally) amended its human rights code to include gender identity & expression. The proposed amendment passed with unanimous approval–all, except, for one:
Laurie Throness, the Liberal MLA for Chilliwack-Hope, said his religious beliefs prevented him from supporting legislation to specifically enshrine protection for transgender people in the human rights law. He said he believes in a fixed-gender, which is decided at birth, and described the LGBTQ community as a powerful lobby group intolerant of himself and others who disagree that the law would add necessary protections.
Why, yes Laurie, I am intolerant of you. Your religious convictions do not belong in Legislature, and unless you think the wannabe theocracy that is America is a model country, you should remember that we operate under separation of church and state. Further, your right to put your religious conviction into a fist ends where my face begins. What you refuse to acknowledge is that relying on case law and implicit protections results in delightful court rulings like this:
A transphobic court case decided that if the organization offering the service is a non-profit organization whose primary purpose is to serve women, it is allowed to discriminate against trans women.
I have every right to be intolerant of you because you insist on perpetuating an actively harmful status quo. Your inaction is not you taking the high road. Your inaction continues to endorse an environment where trans women are routinely pushed to the fringe and criminalized–an environment you are empowered to fix, but choose not to.
I question what kind of moral conviction you must have to refuse to help when you are equipped to do so safely. Good thing you have a priest to pat you on the head every Sunday and assure you that the babble says you’re a good person. Maybe a mature person can develop a more sophisticated ethical code but it seems expecting sophistication from Throness is a bit like expecting coherency from dudebro atheists.
-Shiv
That’s a bit of a misleading title. The dissent was from a Liberal. But yeah, that still seems counter-intuitive.
My parents moved out to BC many years ago and were quite shocked at how far to the right the provincial Liberals were out there. I think they’ve moved left since then but, at the time, they were further right than the provincial Conservatives were in Ontario.
P.S. gotta love people that fight for the ability to legally discriminate. /snark
According to the BC Legislative Assembly site, Laurie Throness is “British Columbia Liberal Party”.
According to Ye Poof of All Knowledge, “The British Columbia Liberal Party […] is a conservative provincial political party” (my added emphasis). The BC Liberals are not the same as the “Liberal Party of Canada”, who actually are liberals (headed by PM Justin Trudeau).
Having a name containing “liberal” ≠ being liberal.