Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper, who campaigned on a promise to hold a free vote on restoring the traditional definition of marriage, read the tea leaves and instead ended up holding a vote on whether or not to hold a vote.  You can’t govern from the far right in a country whose political process and news media haven’t been utterly corrupted by right wing billionaires and big business. 

Demonizing minorities for the sake of driving the bigot vote to the polls can only get you so far in the civilized world, and Harper apparently wants to keep on being prime minister…

Same-sex marriage file closed for good, PM says

Tory attempt to restore traditional definition fails in House; social conservatives cry foul as Harper declares debate over

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared the contentious issue of same-sex marriage to be permanently closed.

After a Conservative motion calling on the government to restore the traditional definition of marriage was defeated yesterday by a resounding 175 to 123, Mr. Harper said he will not bring the matter back before Parliament.

"I don’t see reopening this question in the future," he told reporters who asked whether same-sex marriage would return to the table if the Conservatives won a majority government.

Nor does he intend to introduce a "defence of religions" act to allow public officials, such as justices of the peace, to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

"If there ever were a time in the future where fundamental freedoms were threatened, of course the government would respond to protect them," said the Prime Minister, who voted for the motion. "The government has no plans at this time."

The declared end of the same-sex marriage debate brought comfort to those who have been fighting for such unions. But social conservatives who have supported Mr. Harper’s government said they felt betrayed by his decision to quit their fight; some said it will come back to haunt the party in the next election campaign.

"I am afraid that the Conservative Party feels that they can take social conservatives for granted in this country," said Joseph Ben Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values.

Social Conservatives…? That’s a polite way of saying ‘bigot’ isn’t it?  And as I understand recent Canadian political history, calling Harper a Tory is a bit misleading.  Harper’s party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was formed from a really odd (to this outsider) merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance, which, particularly in Alberta, couldn’t seem to fag bash enough.  The Alliance was Canada’s bigot right, in morals and tone not all that dissimilar from the southern state republicans down here in the U.S,.  They can’t be happy with this.

But the rest of the western industrial world isn’t still arguing about evolution.  Whatever levers big money has to pull in Canada, it looks like playing the fundamentalists for votes isn’t a winning proposition.  So for now anyway, gay people in Canada don’t have to play the roll of the bogeyman herald of the apocalypse who drives the batshit crazies to the polls and keeps the conservatives in power.  They can have lives.  Real lives.