Are Gay People's basic Human Rights Under Attack in Canada?

I was on Twitter a few days ago and someone made the claim that Gay People's basic Human Rights are under attack in Canada. I asked them to provide an example. When they could not I opened it to a greater Twitter audience. At that time, no one was able to provide to me a concrete example of gay rights being attacked in Canada. There were a lot of personal attacks, angry tweets, a few good discussions and many examples of people being being assholes or overall criminals. Some of my detractors even ended up admitting that we do have equality and then attempted to move the goal posts of the conversation that far-right Christians were trying to de-person gay people but again nothing of substance was produced. With pride season coming up in Canada, I believe that we need to differentiate between the TQ's and the LGB's as well as equality, equity and stop conflating individual private bigotry with Governmental abuse of rights.

Transcript

Russell: Alright, and we're back. Russell here from the Canadian Conservative, thecanadianconservative substac.com. And today I want to talk about a Twitter post that I'd made. I had been told by someone that the rights of gay people were being denied in Canada. In fact, specifically I was told that gay people's basic human rights were under attack in Canada. So I decided to make a Twitter post where I posed the question and in it I said, I've been told several times tonight that gay people are under threat, that their basic human rights are being attacked. So I must ask, since no one on the left has been able to tell me yet without deflecting, what basic rights are gay people being denied in Canada? And I did caveat it and asked that people explain to me in plain language, don't link studies, don't give me personal antidotes that can't be proven or disproven, just tell me straight up. And then things got very interesting. The tweet itself got 60,000 views, which is quite a lot of engagement for my account. I would say that the vast majority of people that tried to engage with me engaged in incredibly bad faith. Now, to some people's credit, they did attempt to engage with me in good faith. And we had some good conversations on Twitter. Now, as good of a conversation as you can have on a site that I believe limits you to 270 characters. But nonetheless, some people did provide some information that while we mostly disagreed, there was a couple of points on there where I didn't agree 100%, but I understood their point of view. Where the problem lies is that people conflated basic human rights with people being assholes and people committing crimes. At the end of the day, a private citizen telling someone that's gay, that they don't agree with their lifestyle, that's not denying someone their basic human rights. People are allowed to disagree. People don't have to agree with other people's lifestyle choices. There's no need to affirm people if you don't agree with them. I'm sure there's lots of people while there is, they made it very clear that they disagree with my lifestyle and that's okay, they don't have to agree. And then people brought up hate crimes saying that, well, gay people are attacked all the time in Canada. There's an epidemic of gay people being attacked and their human rights are being denied because of that. And I want to preface this by saying I don't think anyone in Canada should be attacked for being gay. I don't think that I don't agree with it. And if someone is attacking someone for being gay, then that's what we have the court system for. And that's why I told people. People said, well, gay people are being beat up in the streets. And I said, okay then are they being denied medical care? Are they being denied the right to a fair trial? Are they being denied victim compensation? No. Well then their human rights aren't being attacked or abused. They have the same rights as every other citizen that may or may not be assaulted in the streets. And that was the line of attack that I just received constantly on there. Well gay people are being attacked, gay people are being attacked. Canadians are attacked every single day by people for all sorts of different reasons. Some of them based on immutable characteristics. Some of them are just attacked because people are assholes. And people got upset. They said I was being disingenuous with the question. But the question is what basic human rights are gay people being denied in Canada? And as I continued to ask the question the answer shifted. The answer went from being a hate crime attack in which I said okay, I don't think anyone should be attacked. But how is that systemic of the government denying gay people their basic human rights? Individual citizens attacking other individual citizens? As long as they're granted equal access to the court system and that the laws are applied as fairly and justly as they can be in Canada, then that's equality. If people want extra special protections, well that's not equality. Now we're into equity. So I had to have that argument a few times and as the attack vector shifted it shifted to people saying okay, well gay people have equality but conservative Christians are trying to take that away. And then I said okay well tell me how well they're attacking gay marriage. They want to get rid of marriage. I haven't heard of a single person conservative wanting to get rid of gay marriage. I haven't heard it. Then people start linking stuff to the states. I said well it doesn't matter what happens in the states. I'm talking about Canada, not the United States. Well what happens in the states will come to Canada. I said no, it won't. You can't guarantee that. And then people started mind reading. That was another thing that became interesting. Well, gay people face discrimination in the workplace. I said well that's illegal. Well they do. I said well can you prove it? And people said well it's just how they're treated. Well we can't mind read here. One individual asshole doing something that can get themselves sued is not predictive of systemic denial of basic human rights. Scott Adams quite often talks about two conversations on one screen. So basically people are living in two different realities. And that's what I saw is I saw a group of people that claimed that gay people were being denied their basic human rights and they're being attacked in the streets daily. And then I had other people, many of them who are gay because I follow a lot of gay conservatives on social media saying no, there's no basic human rights that are being denied. So it comes down to language and framing and the left has framed it that if a gay person is ever attacked for any reason, then that is proof that their human rights are being denied. But that's not the case. Now, if they were not allowed to go to trial, then I would agree. If they were not allowed to apply for victim compensation, I would agree. If they were denied something that everyone else gets, I would agree. So at the end of the day, language problem aside, when I hear online that we need to do more, there's more work to be done, I ask myself, well, what more work is there to be done? Gay people have the same rights as everyone else. What is it exactly? And if you want extra special rights, well, that's a different conversation because now we're getting into equity, not equality. I'm not trying to be an asshole and I'm not trying to deny that people discriminate. Yeah, people do. People discriminate about everything. Unfortunately, that's the society that we live in. There is discrimination still. But those one off cases are not reflective of the society as a whole. We're being told in the media sphere that gay people still don't have the same rights as other people. And then I get these stats about gay people suicide and gay people not being accepted by their parents. The Catholic Church still won't marry gay people. Well, the Catholic Church separation of church and state is a real thing. And the Catholic Church is allowed to say that they won't marry two men or two women. That's their right. And you have the right to go to another church and there is various churches that will marry gay people. The Catholic Church has the right to say that they don't agree with people's lifestyle choices, that's their right. And the left is more than willing to criticize them for that online and in person. Now, the church is not immune from criticism. Sure, they can criticize, but the church is allowed to have their beliefs. And so at the end of the day, I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to squeeze from people what basic human rights are being denied. And I didn't get an answer from anyone that wasn't anecdotal or pointing to a culture and societal issue, not a human rights issue. So when June rolls around and people say, we still have more to do in the fight for equality, I'm not going to buy it. And here's the thing too. You can't force acceptance. You can demand tolerance under equality, but you can't demand acceptance. Acceptance comes over time, every single day. There's lots of gay people that are going to church. They're going to work. They're participating in different political parties, including conservatism. And they're doing it without any barriers and they're doing without harassment or discrimination. And that's what we should be striving for. And they're doing it because they're just going there and they're just being themselves. So I am still waiting and we will see if someone does manage to post something that says and gives a plain and simple answer to what basic human rights gay people don't have. But until then, equality is a good thing. Equity is not a good thing. Because I do believe in equality. Because when we have equality of opportunity, when we have equality in society, it only makes economic sense. And we want the best people in the best job, suited for them, suited for the economy, and suited for their personal belonging and growth within the society. When we talk about basic human rights being denied for gay people, I think of places like Chechnya where if you're gay, your parents can turn you over to the police and you can be arrested. There's countries where being gay is a death sentence, all right? The police arrest you, you're tried, you're found guilty by the government and then you're killed, you're disappeared by the government. In some places, if you're gay, you can lose your business, your business license. That is a denial of basic human rights. There is still a fight for equality, but it's not in Canada. We're modeling equality for the rest of the world. And anyone that says that gay people don't have the same basic human rights, they need to actually be able to explain what human rights are being denied to gay people. Anyways, that's all my thoughts on that. I'm sure we're going to see the rhetoric pumping up just in time for pride season in Canada. And I just want to keep that in mind for people. When the corpos and the government turn around and say that they're supporting gay people because their rights are under attack or they don't have the same rights, we have equality in Canada. We should strive to keep it equal and then we can be a model country for other countries. That's all I got for today, everyone. Russell, the Canadian Conservative podcast, and we'll talk to you next time.