Singer k.d. accuses Harper of supporting intolerance by skipping Outgames

MONTREAL -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper has chosen to “support intolerance” by refusing to attend an international gathering of gay athletes, singer k.d. lang said Friday.

Lang was critical of her fellow Albertan for failing to support the World Outgames, which is expected to attract up to 13,000 gay, bisexual and transgendered athletes when it begins Saturday.

“It’s a sad statement that the national leader of a country that’s one of the most progressive countries in the world chooses to support intolerance,” she told a news conference at the Olympic Stadium.

But lang added that the gay community shouldn’t take Harper’s absence personally.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=0ea26c16-1edb-49ef-aa9b-86775c44ee87&k=33084

necessarily a sign of anything other than non-participation.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/howarddean2008.htm

He also wants to revisit Canada's recent legalization of same-sex unions, and vote on it all over again.

is why we like her...

and tell me -- what is it about kd that makes you think she is over the top?

That sort of non-action is something we've seen from Bush and other politicians quite a bit lately. It would have taken very little effort for him to show support earlier. Why did he go to the NAACP after all this time? Well, I'd suggest he's looking for an uptick in his approval rating numbers. Good for you, lang. I see it as simply an observation from her.

if they think setting a cetain segment of societies hair on fire is good for them personally they will -- pandering when they think that will work.

power hungry cynics everyone.

I'd say trying to overturn same-sex marriage throughout Canada is pretty anti-gay, yeah.

...keeping athletes out of the country because in their home country they didn't have jobs is pretty much coming out against it. The slowness of approving visas for others is just another way of coming out against it too. Especially when you consider Canada used to have a pretty speedy immigration department.

No I don't have a link for you at this time, and don't have time to find one (gotta head out the door for work shortly) but if you want one, I am sure I could find one. It was big news on my local gay radio station over the weekend.

roundly booed. Coulnd't hear a word he said.

kd lang repeated the above before her performance.

Beautiful reading of the Montreal charter by Martina Navratilova and Mark Tewksbury.

It was amazing to see the thousands of athletes from over 100 countries stream in, some from countries where homosexuality is against the law.

Cheers from the crowd of 40,000 in Montreal for the opening ceremonies in the first-ever Outgames Saturday night turned to boos when a stand-in for Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped onstage.

The audience wagged their fingers, cried "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and slammed their folding chairs, interrupting Conservative Federal Public Works Minister Michael Fortier's speech, according to the Montreal Gazette.

<snip>

Fortier is closely tied to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He was Harper's national campaign co-chair and a surprise unelected appointment to the federal cabinet.

<snip>

The audience for the ceremonies was a vocal one, also giving two ovations to Mayor Tremblay and sustained cheers for athletes hailing from countries in which homosexuality is a crime. Representatives from at least 20 of those countries are in Canada for the games, which continue through August 5.

More:
http://uk.gay.com/headlines/10187

When did they start this?

Didn't the Gay Games just happen in Chicago?

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060730/outgames_060730/20060730?hub=TopStories

Bloc Quebecois MP Real Menard took part in a wrestling event Sunday, and said the sport reminded him of his day job. "Just like in politics, it's not always the strongest who wins," Menard told CTV News.

And Martina Navratilova had this to say about the booed Conservative:

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who helped read a human rights declaration during the ceremony, said the crowd's reaction to Fortier was justified. "When you turn the clock back and not give us equal rights we deserve under law, then you're going to have a problem," she said.

I have never believed that Harper gives a shit about "social conservative" non-issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, capital punishment, blah blah. He came to the right wing by the traditional economic right-wing route, and adopted fundamentalist Christianity (and has sucked up to its fellow travellers in other religious groups, particularly in immigrant ethnic communities) for expediency and nothing else.

From 2002 when he won the party leadership:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_zolf/20020322.html
(I'm not a huge Zolf fan, him being a big Lib and me not, but the piece is an interesting read.)

The real big question in Canadian politics now is: is Stephen Harper the messiah of the Canadian Alliance or is he just another Alliance mess waiting in the wings? No one in the media on Alliance election night asked Mr. Harper what his years in the National Citizens Coalition really meant to him. Nobody asked him about the National Citizens Coalition’s aggressive, almost violent campaign against trade unions, against old age pensions, against all intervention in the economy, and for tax cuts, tax privileges and subsidies for the rich, the powerful and the corporate world.

Mr. Harper did not discuss the National Citizens Coalition in his acceptance speech, but in it there was a big clue to his mindset when he promised “to speak for the working man, not the union bosses.” Stockwell Day was pilloried by the media for holding a sign up on television that read “no 2-tier health care.” Harper won’t be caught holding up such a sign because as a National Citizens Coalition president and true believer in two-tier medicine, Harper doesn’t have to.

He's a true believer in something, but it ain't the literal word of the bible or anything like that.

http://www.christianity.ca/faith/profiles/2005/12.000.html

Harper, a Presbyterian by background, finds himself spiritually "at home" in Christian and Missionary Alliance congregations in Calgary and Ottawa. Those who know him attest that he listens carefully to what his pastors and some Christian mentors have to say and finds strength in his understanding of the Gospel he hears. And that helps to inform his faith.

Bullshit of the purest and most transparent variety. The odds of someone reared Presbyterian finding him/herself "spiritually at home" in a hellhole of right-wing Christianity like that are pretty close to nil, unless s/he has suffered a head injury. Not unless what's making him so comfy is the sight of all those votes for his vicious right-wing party.

In that party, Harper has surrounded himself with the vilest of the vile -- the MP who likened the services provided at an abortion clinic in downtown Ottawa to the beheading of members of the US military in Iraq, which was in the news this week, is just one tiny example of the kind of atrocity he tolerates in his caucus; his only comment on her was:

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/election-chronology.shtml

"Cheryl Gallant is a very strong pro-life MP, and this is the rhetoric that the pro-life movement often uses. It's their business. I don't think it's particularly effective in public opinion."

While he's had no choice but to oust a couple of his most swinishly racist members from caucus, that one still sits on his benches.

He is rotten to the core, but I'll never believe that he actually believes any of this "values" nonsense. How much uglier, I'd say, that he uses the evil spewed by such people to get power in order to implement his own right-wing economic agenda.