Remember how the first thing Canadian winger Stephen Harper said at the beginning of his campaign for Prime Minister was how he was going to make same sex marriage illegal in Canada again? Remember how he stopped talking about same sex marriage throughout the rest of his campaign, to make himself look moderate?

Guess what?

New Canadian PM To Move Quickly On Gay Marriage Repeal

(Ottawa) Stephen Harper says he wants to move quickly as leader of a fractious new Parliament to reopen the same-sex marriage debate.

The makeup of the new House of Commons suggests the prime minister-designate knows there's a good chance such a motion will be rejected.

It would not be a total loss, however. In fact, an honorable defeat on equal marriage would satisfy obligations to Harper's most right-wing supporters while defusing a politically explosive issue.

...

Still, Harper has promises to keep to the most traditional members of his team.

He has said he'll put a free-vote motion before Parliament on whether the heterosexual definition of matrimony should be restored...The Conservatives would then craft legislation to that effect should the motion pass in a sharply divided House of Commons. ...

But at least one Conservative insider who spoke on condition of anonymity said social moderates in the party would welcome the issue's demise.

"There would be a quiet hurrah."

It’d be a relief would it?

Notice what is missing here from this article from the Canadian Press: Any shred of concern for the welfare of gay and lesbian Canadians. And notice that Harper is openly pictured as a man who is merely using the issue to hold onto support from the extreme right. Kinda like our guy in the White House down here, who as I recall also ran as the man to restore ethics to government. But what is ethical about using your fellow citizens as political punching bags for votes, as though their lives, their hopes, their dreams are merely pieces on a political game board? What is ethical about gaming a vote to loose that you’re telling your supporters represents something you stand for. If this is the man some Canadians voted for to restore ethics to government, they’re in for a bitter awakening. Or not. Actually, we’re still waiting for that awakening to happen here in the United States, aren’t we? A moderate more often then not, is someone who doesn’t want to be held responsible for cheap prejudices they know full well ought to be beneath a civilized person.

If anyone in Canada is thinking the gay haters will just go away if they loose this vote they are sadly mistaken. They may not represent the majority of Canadians, or even the majority of Tories, but an American extremist, Ralph Reed, taught their kind some years ago, that they don’t have to be, to make government dance to their tune. They just have to be enough to bring everything down whenever they want. They want the hearts of gay and lesbian Canadians served up to them on a platter, and sooner or later the Tories will have to deliver or loose power. The only question is, will the so called social moderates go from wishing the issue would just go away, to wishing gay people would just go away, as they have here in the United States. This is when you find out who really has a conscience, and who just talks like they know what one is.

I walked away from friends I’d known since college after they voted for Bush in the last election. I had one simple thing to say to them: I am not the “some”, in “some of my best friends are…” I am a human being, with the same need, the same hopes and dreams for love and joy and fulfillment the rest of you have. I need arms to hold me. I need a heart to share with mine. If you vote to take that dream, that hope from me, I don’t give a good goddamn if you dance in its ashes afterward along with the haters or not. I don’t care what your motives were. It’s not the thing you cared about but the thing you didn’t: me. If you could do that to me, you are simply not a friend of mine, and you never were. I don’t know you.

It’s bitter sadness, but there are gay Canadians today, reading the headlines, looking at family and friends, and realizing now that very same thing: I…don’t know you.