Gary Bauer's Focus is the Harper Government's Vision

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

Another soldier in the war against American women, who helped to the launch a similar war against Canadian women, is Gary Bauer.

Bauer was with the Moral Majority/Religious Right political movement, that helped to run Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. As reward, he was appointed to the Education Department, as the "family policy" czar, and his first order of business was to "usurp the feminists" (1).

With that accomplished, the Department of Education, then directed the effort to crown the fathers. As Susan Faludi said, "If the "pro-family" movement was "pro" anything, it was paternal power". The same has been said of REAL Women of Canada. (2)

To many, the creation of a "family policy" office would suggest an office committed to helping families with things like financial aid, and medical or legal assistance, but that was not the case. Instead they churned out lectures on how the American family should "behave".

And in a further attack against the Civil Rights movement, Bauer told civil-rights leaders: "The values taught on the `Cosby' show would do more to help low-income and minority children than a bevy of new federal programs. . . . a lot of research indicates that values are much more important, say, than the level of welfare payments."

Not everyone could accomplish what the Huxtables accomplished, with a doctor father and lawyer mother, and that includes most white families. However, the Religious Right's attitude on racial issues has not changed since Reagan's time, as witnessed by their latest offspring, the FAMILY LEADER, and their suggestion that slavery was good for the black family.

However, women and blacks were not the only targets of Bauer's office"

[In 1986] President Reagan asked the surgeon general [C. Everett Koop] to prepare a report on AIDS as the United States confirmed its ten-thousandth case. Leaders of the evangelical movement did not want Koop to write the report, nor did senior White House staffers ..... Dr. Koop related to me, "Gary Bauer was my nemesis in Washington because he kept me from the president. He kept me from the cabinet and he set up a wall of enmity between me and most of the people that surrounded Reagan because he believed that anybody who had AIDS ought to die with it. That was God's punishment for them. (3)

Gary and Carol Bauer: Your Typical American Family

Bauer's office promoted the nuclear family, as laid out in a fifty-two-page diatribe, that senator Daniel P. Moynihan, referred to as "less a policy statement than a tantrum."

"The Family: Preserving America's Future" opens with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt: "If the mother does not do her duty, there will either be no next generation, or a next generation that is worse than none at all." The pages were filled with attacks on "women who work, women who use day care, women who divorce", and "women who have babies out of wedlock".

His "recommendations" to save the family included a list of punishments for girls and mothers: "bar young single mothers from public housing; revive old divorce laws to make it harder for women to break the wedding bonds; deny contraceptives to young women". Mothers who stay home, he suggested, should get tax breaks; "the more babies, the more credits".

With such strong opinions you would think that Bauer and his wife Carole, were living this desired family life. But they weren't.

It comes then as a bit of a surprise to learn that Bauer has subjected his own children to this leftist institution—for nine years. (Bauer called daycares "Marxist")

He can explain it, he says. His use of day care was "different" and "better" because he placed his children in "home-based" day care—that is, an unlicensed center run out of a woman's living room. (It's unclear how this is better: a national review of child abuse statistics at day care centers finds that the most incidents of abuse have occurred at such unlicensed sites.) At any rate, Bauer says, a bit defensively, it's not like his kids went directly from the maternity ward to the day care nursery. His wife, Carol, waited "at least three, four months" before she returned to work. (1)

However, wife Carol remembers it differently:

"Actually, I went back to work six weeks after Elyse was born," says his wife ... At the time of her daughter Elyse's birth in 1977, Carol Bauer explains, she was a top assistant to Congresswoman Margaret Heckler; she couldn't just quit.

A lack of federal assistance programs for mothers also played a role in her decision: "There's no set leave policy on the Hill," she points out. Financial considerations entered into it, too: "We had bought a house and we had a mortgage." And then there was that other impulse that she just couldn't seem to squelch: "It wasn't just economics. I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of the work. I loved work." She laughs. "I mean, when I had Elyse, I literally took my work with me. After I got out of the hospital, I was working the next day at home."

For years, at eight o'clock every morning, the Bauers dropped off Elyse, and eventually their second daughter, Sarah, at day care, put in a full day of work, and then picked up the girls on the way home, usually after six o'clock. The children spent so much time at day care, in fact, Carol Bauer says, that when it came time for Elyse to enter kindergarten, they enrolled her in the school in the center's neighborhood rather than their own. How did the girls feel about day care? "Oh, fine," Carol Bauer says. "They were very happy there. For them it was normal."(1)

Like Beverly Lehaye, one of the founders of REAL Women's inspiration: 'Concerned Women for America', Carol Bauer only felt fulfilled when she was working outside the home. When she finally did drop out of the workforce, Bauer found "nesting" difficult, and was only happy when she spent most waking hours doing volunteer work.

Oh, and that "family values" man, Gary Bauer.

He was alleged to have had an affair with a 26-year-old staffer (deputy campaign manager Melissa McClard), prompting nine members of his staff to quit. He denied that it was an affair, but Charles Jarvis, Bauer's campaign manager, warned Bauer several times "in the clearest possible terms" that he was creating "the appearance of impropriety" by spending "hours and hours and hours behind closed doors with a young single woman."

Canada's "family values" man, Vic Toews, lost his deniability rights, when it was revealed that he had fathered a child with a young conservative staffer, breaking up his 30 years plus marriage.

From Women's Affairs to Foreign Affairs

"For Harper, the courtship of the Christian right is unlikely to prove an electoral one-night stand. Three years ago, in a speech to the annual Conservative think-fest, Civitas, he outlined plans for a broad new party coalition that would ensure a lasting hold on power. The only route, he argued, was to focus not on the tired wish list of economic conservatives or “neo-cons,” as they’d become known, but on what he called “theo-cons”—those social conservatives who care passionately about hot-button issues that turn on family, crime, and defence.

"Even foreign policy had become a theo-con issue, he pointed out, driven by moral and religious convictions. “The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values,” he said, “so conservatives must do the same.

"Arguing that the party had to come up with tough, principled stands on everything from parents’ right to spank their children to putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments ... " (4)

Gary Bauer continues to work the circuit of anti-feminist, anti-gay conferences, where REAL Women of Canada make regular appearances.

REAL also promotes Bauer's new group: American Values, in his attack on "leftie" judges.

Bauer is associated with Focus on the Family, a group that conservative MPs, Rob Anders and Maurice Vellacott belong to, and who helped Stephen Harper get elected in 2006, on his "anti-same-sex marriage" platform.

But the most alarming activities for Bauer, and indeed most of the Religious Right, is their dramatic shift to foreign policy.

Bauer is a member of the Project for the New American Century, that included neoconservatives like Steve Forbes, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and William Kristol. This group helped to draft the Bush Doctrine.

They have been critical of Obama's decision not to send ground troops to Libya, instead following the UN Resolution, which does not support a "regime change".

The Harper Doctrine has no such limitations, and in fact is very specific that only a regime change will do.

However, even more alarming is Bauer's new pet project: Emergency Committee for Israel's Leadership, an aggressive extension of Christians United for Israel, who support extended military engagement in the Middle East.

Jim Flaherty's pal, Charles McVety, heads up the Canadian chapter.

This group, like most in the movement, are Apocalyptic.

So what does it mean when they not only provide foot soldiers for Harper's war on women, but dictate his foreign policy? Or what Harper himself calls 'putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments'.

Yet another reason why the media has to start paying attention.

Drop the 'Tory' nonsense, and report from the Neoconservative/Religious Right/Tea Party reality.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 263-267

2. "R.E.A.L. Women, Anti-feminism and the Welfare State, By Lorna Erwin, Resources for Feminist Research, 1988

3. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, By D. Michael Lindsay, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-19-532666-6

4. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006

How Focus on the Family is Losing Their War Against Familes

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

For more than three decades, James Dobson and others like him have been touting the same message. Only nuclear families are legitimate and any other family structure is detrimental to children. As we see in the video, they cherry pick or distort legitimate studies to try to prove their point.

But as suggested, gay and lesbian parents have to work harder to have a family, so there are no "accidents". They are not as a rule "teen" parents and when they apply for adoption, as with any other applicants, must prove that they can provide a stable and loving home.

In his book the Rights Revolution, Michael Ignatieff discusses family issues:

What conservatives see as the collapse of the family, liberals view as its mutation into new forms. Nowadays, there are many types of good parents and many types of good families: nuclear, extended, single-parent, same-sex. The fact that there are many types of families does not mean that there are no longer any fixed standards about what a good family is. The test of goodness is loose but evident: it's a community where each member receives and displays lifelong moral concern for the well-being of everyone else .... an enduring moral commitment.

A child needs to feel that her development matters intensely to another person, and that this person will stay the course with her to ensure that she develops as best she can. What a liberal insists upon is the idea that it is possible to reconcile a commitment to absolute standards of care and responsibility in family life with a faith that these standards can be met by a wide variety of persons and a wide variety of possible family forms.

So-called family values, as propagated in the rhetoric of North American popular entertainment, pulpit sermonizing, and political homily, are a downright tyranny. They make people feel inadequate, ashamed, or guilty about their inability to conform to what is in fact a recent, post-war suburban norm of family domesticity. (1)

That's what defines a family, not it's structural makeup. By hammering the idea that a child can only develop properly with a married mother and father, risks making some children feel inadequate, not in the home but within society. Because what children of "family values" parents hear at home they will repeat on the schoolyard or playground.

Most Christians, whether on the left or the right, will agree that children are a gift from God, so why can't they accept that maybe he (or she) just chooses a variety of gift wrapping?

The results of a study on children raised by lesbian couples finds the opposite to what Dobson preaches:

A study that has been following children raised by lesbian parents for the past 24 years has concluded that not only are the children healthy, they’re generally smarter, nicer and better behaved than those raised by male-female couples.

The results of the US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study were published today in Pediatrics magazine and found that “daughters and sons of lesbian mothers, all conceived through donor insemination, were rated higher than their peers in social, academic and overall competence, and lower in aggressive behaviour, rule-breaking and social problems, on standardised assessments of psychological adjustment”. While there have been many studies about the children of gay and lesbian parents, this is the first one to follow children from conception through adolescence. (2)

This doesn't mean that we should aspire to having all children be raised by two moms, only that it's OK for children to be raised by two moms, or two dads, or one mom or one dad, or any other combination. And to do that we need to redefine "family values".

We need family values all right, but the ones we actually need must be pluralistic. We need to understand that the essential moral needs of any child can be met by family arrangements that run the gamut from arranged marriages right through to same-sex parenting. Nature and natural instinct are poor guides in these matters. If good parenting were a matter of instinct, families wouldn't be the destructive institutions they so often are. It is frequently the case that perfect strangers turn out to be better parents or step-parents than natural ones.

... The point is not to invalidate one type of parent. Instead, it is to insist that ideology will not help us here: if we insist that one category or type of parent will always do a better job than any other, we are certain to be wrong. Same-sex parents have taught us that there is no necessary relationship between heterosexuality and good parenting. The question to be asked in every case is not what kind of sexual creatures these parents are, or even what kind of biological or other relationship they have to these children, but what kind of parents they are. The test of goodness here is the capacity for sustained moral concern and to be willing to make reasonable sacrifices for the sake of children's interests. (1)

Religion is being used and abused for financial and political gain. As such it has narrowed discourse to single issues, like abortion and same-sex marriage, instead of looking at the broader picture, and examining faith from a variety of concerns. E.J. Dionne, in his book Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right, states:

... reducing religion to politics or to a narrow set of public issues amounts to a great sellout of our traditions. It is common to speak of religion as "selling out" to secularism, or to modernity, or to a fashionable relativism. But there is a more immediate danger .. of religion selling out to political forces that use the votes of religious people for purposes having nothing to do with a religious agenda—and, often enough, for causes that may contradict the values such voters prize most. It is a great sellout of religion to insist that it has much to teach us about abortion or gay marriage but little useful to say about social justice, war and peace, the organization of our work lives, or our approach to providing for the old, the sick, and the desperate.

Religion becomes less relevant to public life when its role is marginalized to a predetermined list of "values issues," when its voice is silenced or softened on
the central problems facing our country and our government. (3)

The neoconservative movement that has tapped into religion, has been able to deflect attention away from the things we should be focusing on, including those mentioned above, but also on health care, education, poverty, homelessness, etc. This has worked to their advantage because those are all the things they really want to avoid having to deal with.

The religious right, left and everything in between, need to start working together on the things that really matter, and not allow the politicians who choose to exploit, or those in the lucrative "business" of selling faith, to set the agenda.

Sources:

1. The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi Books, 2000, ISBN: 978=0-88784-762-2, Pg. 102-103

2. The Secret To Having The Perfect Child: Be A Lesbian, By Brian Moylan, The Defamer, June 8, 2010

3. Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right, By E.J. Dionne, Jr., Princeton University Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-691--13458--1. Pg. 3

How Focus on the Family is Destroying Children

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

James Dobson is the founder of Focus on the The Family, and one of the leading members of the Religious Right. He not only spent thousands of dollars campaigning for Stephen Harper's fight against equal marriage, but he provided four and a half million dollars to start a Focus on the Family in Canada.

Harper's assistant chief of staff, Darrel Reid founded the group, and several of Harper's MPs, including Maurice Vellacott, Rob Anders and Brad Trost, belong to it.

It is one of the oldest of these so-called "values", "families" groups, and is certainly one of the most profitable. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most damaging.

Brian Elroy McKinley, a former Christian, has launched a website, that not only exposes FOTF, but also acts as a support group for others who have been damaged because of Dobson. He doesn't feel that Focus are alone but speaks of how "... the illness of judgementalism, and prejudgementalism has infected the ranks of the faithful." (1) This should help to serve as their wake up call.

From one testimonial:

For fourteen years I attended church three times a week with my parents. This particular church seemed to have a very intimate relationship with Focus on the Family. I was taught women didn't deserve the same respect as men because they were not equal to them. This and other "values" were ingrained into my young, absorbent mind from the nursery to youth group. As a female, this contributed to my low self-esteem. My self esteem, in turn, led to my silence after my rape (my youth pastor convinced me it was my fault and that I was "ruined") and a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. My experiences drove me to reject Christianity as a whole. I would like to give my life back to Christ, but I can't let go of my haunting memories. I also can't separate Christianity'steachings from those of Dr. Dobson. (2)

And Another:

I was raised as a child by the Dobson's methods. I went to a Christian School whose idea of sexual education was to put on a Dobson tape and tell us to take notes. I was given "tough love" because my parents were confused with certain aspects of my personality that Dobson claimed was "passive rebellion". Ergo, I was given "spankings" (the details of which I will spare you, but I understand that not even Prisoners of War, according to the Geneva Convention, should be treated in such ways). It was all done by the book (Dobson's books) and his radio shows were always on the radio.

Three nervous breakdowns, years of therapy and support groups, and a lost childhood later, I am just starting to learn what Mr. Dobson's theories have done to me. Despite this, millions continue to listen and adhere to his destructive approach to parenting. For years, I thought I was alone in this opinion. My parents and I have made our peace over the past. But, it churns my stomach to know he carries on. (2)

And still another:

I am a gay man. Many years ago, I listened to Focus on the Family. They had a news show called 'Family News in Focus.' It was the only thing that I found that addressed homosexuality..albeit in a negative light. Their radio program really worked on me. I nearly killed myself before finally accepting myself as I am. A friend of mine was less fortunate and became obsessed with Bob Larson's 'Talk Back' program and later committed suicide.

After this happened, I started researching the Religious Right and found them out to be a very scary bunch. Bob Larson has a fan club these days. But, as you are seeing, it's hard to criticize them, because then you're the 'enemy' who is 'attacking' Christianity. It's a catch-22, and I know that it's not Christianity that you wish to attack! I have come across some 'Christian' sites and have sent letters to their editors when they come across so extreme, trying to get them to consider what they are saying. But I only get a bible verse back, and a polite letter that doesn't address what I said to them at all.

"Love the sinner but not the sin" is what I'm told. I asked one of them why don't they think that it's a sin using homosexuals in fundraising letters in order to stir up anger toward us (to get 'love gifts' from their followers)?

I'm hoping that one day being a Conservative Christian means things other than attacking homosexuals, focusing on abortion and prayer in schools. (2)

Groups like Focus marginalize anyone who doesn't fit into their narrow little definition of what a person or a family should be. And they have an almost cult like following.

Susan Greene, a columnist for the Denver Post discovered just how much of a cult following Dobson had, when she wrote criticizing his endorsement of spanking children.

Having been called all sorts of names as a columnist, I've got to hand it to some members of the religious right for their spirited invective. A column I wrote over the weekend criticizing James Dobson for his advocacy of corporal punishment prompted one reader to call me a "Jezebel," another a "dyke." Five men and two women have lobbed the c-word my way. And I have been called a "retard" three times and a "moron" twice since Sunday.

All purportedly in defense of Dr. Dobson and the moral righteousness of his teachings. Several readers took umbrage with my use of the verb "hit" as a synonym for "spank" — as if spanking were more virtuous, see, because it is focused on the family.

...Reader Charlie Haynes called to tout how effective he found it to have bitten his troubled young daughter and hit her head on the ground. Scott from Castle Rock phoned to threaten me with a spanking (with me wearing bobby socks, as he bothered to imagine it). No joke. Walter Smetana decried my criticism of Dobson as illustrative of a "mindless, bestial, even Satanic banality of evil."

...And Walt Morrison sent his warmest and fuzziest anti-Semitic regards, using the debate about discipline to launch into a hateful rant about the need to exterminate Jews. Way to spread the love, Mr. M!

What touches me, I mean really touches me, are all the good folks who have called to say they're praying for me and my hatefulness. That's code for insinuating that I'm headed for damnation because I don't spank my kids and am dubious when readers claim their own grown children have thanked them for whacking them.

"My daddy belted me. I belted my son. And God willing, my son will discipline his own boy," Paul White, a reader and self-described amateur pastor, phoned to tell me Monday morning. "It's called backbone. It's called firmness," he continued. Maybe, Mr. White. But it's also called abuse and repetition compulsion and being a big old bullying blow-hard, plain and simple. Now put your belt back on. (3)

Yes, it also churns my stomach to know that there are people out there like this.

Sources:

1. A More Honest Form of Faith, A Former Christian's Perspective, By Brian McKinley

2. People directly damaged by Focus and the people who follow them, Letters of Support

3. James Dobson evokes storm of responses, By Susan Greene, The Denver Post, March 2, 2010

Maurice Vellacott and the Culture of Christianity

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 1996, a very pregnant, 40 year old Bettye Joyce Beal from St. Louis, slipped and fell in her home, and as a result lost a lot of blood. When she arrived at hospital it was determined that the baby in her womb was not getting the blood and oxygen it needed, and therefore, the doctor on duty recommended a transfusion.

However, Beal declined treatment, because as a Jehovah's Wittiness, blood transfusions were against her religion. The hospital sought a court order, but by the time it was received, the woman and her unborn son had died. (1)

According to their website: "Jehovah's Witnesses condemn abortion, teaching that life begins at conception and life is sacred to Jehovah."

This is a perfect example of religious beliefs in conflict, not only with state's laws, but laws within a religious sect.

Maurice Vellacott has on many occasions tried to push through a bill allowing health care workers to refuse to provide medical assistance if certain procedures were against their religious beliefs. Of course, we know that this was just another attempt at criminalising abortion and clearly Vellacott had not thought this through.

If a health care worker's religious beliefs prevent them from doing their job, they need to find a different profession. There are far too many varying religious beliefs in this country to accommodate them all.

I was recently berated by Vellacott's legislative assistant Timothy Bloedow because I questioned his boss's education. At issue was the use of the term 'doctor', since Vellacott does not hold a PhD, but a religious doctorate, which makes him well qualified to act as a pastor. Fair enough.

I kind of like Mr. Bloedow because he keeps me on my toes.

However, at issue here, is whether Vellacott is qualified to act as a Member of Parliament in Canada, and it's not his education that is the problem, but his interpretation of religion. The Religious Right, to which he is a card carrying member, have created a culture of Christianity, based on a few talking points.

The various think tanks and non-profit organizations that operate within this "culture" or "sub-culture", do all the thinking, and rather than leading their followers toward an understanding of faith, they lead them through a mimicking of faith. 'Just do what our pamphlets tell you to do, and leave the rest to us. And please make your cheques payable to ....'

The understanding is that the heads of these organizations have read the Bible from cover to cover, and have found the absolute "truth". However, while I've no doubt that they have read the Bible from cover to cover, they did not unearth the "truth" and stuck it in their pamphlets. They have unearthed a palatable "truth", leaving out the meat of the Bible which would prove why it can only guide, but not dictate.

In fact if Canadians really lived by the infallible word of the Bible we would probably be arrested. The late Charles Templeton, a former televangelist, who even toured with Billy Graham, provides an example in the story of Abram and his wife Sarai.

And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land. And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.

And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels. (2)

Templeton suggests that this speaks to the morality of God, which would be astonishing by today's standards. Abram pimped out his wife to save his life, while enjoying the rewards of the arrangement.

Could I then set up a brothel and claim that it is based on the Bible?

The Old Testament is filled with stories like that, that speak of a vengeful and immoral God, so why would we want to have our laws based on Biblical principles?

The Religious Right use their faith as a weapon, and have established imaginary enemies. They believe they are being victimized because of their beliefs, but they are not the victims here. In fact I think the biggest victim of this new political movement is Christianity itself, because they've turned it into the most unwelcoming religion on the planet.

As a politician, Maurice Vellacott makes a great preacher. As a preacher he makes a lousy politician. The two can mix, but he has not sought to find the formula. Next election, the progressives in his riding must work together to remove him from office, because not only does he not represent Canadian values, he does not represent Christian values.

He is not the only poster child for the need to separate church and state, but he is definitely one of them.

Sources:

1. RELIGIOUS BELIEFS & LIFE SAVING THERAPY, Kevin O'Rourke, December 1996

2. Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, By Charles Templeton, McClelland & Stewart, 1996, ISBN: 0-7710-8422-6, Pg 59-61

Calgary West Wants Anders Trashed But Harper Can't Let Go

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Rob is a true reformer and a true conservative. He has been a faithful supporter of mine and I am grateful for his work." Stephen Harper

Rob Anders first won the Calgary West riding for the Reformers in 1997, after Stephen Harper stepped aside to run the National Citizens Coalition. Anders was also with the NCC, acting as the director of Canadians Against Forced Unionism.

A strong social conservative, he also belongs to James Dobson's Focus on the Family, (an offshoot of the Council for National Policy); Charles McVety's Canada Family Action Coalition and the Right-wing Fraser Institute.

It would appear that the riding association in Calgary West is not so thrilled with his performance and negative imaging, and have been trying to oust him.

Rob Anders and Donna Kennedy-Glans don’t agree on much, but they agree on at least one thing: they haven’t seen much of each other since Anders was first elected in Calgary West under the Reform banner in 1997.

“There’s no sense of relationship with the MP,” says Kennedy-Glans, a corporate lawyer and former Nexen vice-president. Like many other political observers, she describes Anders as a lacklustre representative who’s inaccessible, narrow-minded and lacking in empathy. “It’s been really hard to get involved in federal politics in this riding for the last little while,” says Kennedy-Glans, who’s lived in Calgary West for almost 25 years. “I’m finding that’s where a lot of people are at." (1)

This wasn't the first time they tried to get rid of Anders, yet Stephen Harper has gone to enormous lengths to hold onto him, even having the national party change the rules just to accommodate him.

CALGARY (CBC) - The Conservative Party's national council has taken over the Calgary West riding, whose board members have been trying to oust the local Tory candidate for the next election. The 30-member board of the Calgary West Conservative Association has been trying to oust MP Rob Anders and hold a nomination race in the riding .... (2)

And yet Harper himself stated that he would not play politics like this. So why such an interest in an MP who has been called an embarrassment by his own constituents? According to a posting on the National Citizens Coalition's own website:

I think Harper should be paying attention to the riding of Calgary West where Rob Anders continues to be our candidate despite a big show of unhappiness in the electorate. Maybe the NCC should look into the political shenanigans that the cabinet has pursued in order to keep Anders in the seat despite the fact that after three elections the cabinet doesn’t think Anders is worthy of an important position in the conservative ranks. Perhaps there are other ridings with similar problems. We want a riding election for our candidate, not a shoe-in organized by cabinet "new rules."

There are indeed "other ridings with similar problems", including:



I suspect it's Ander's ties to so many groups who have been pivotal to Harper's success, from Focus on the Family to the Progressive Group of Independent Businesses. He couldn't fire him even if he wanted to, or there would be hell to pay.

Next: Craig Chandler, Rob Anders and the Progressive Group for Independent Business

Sources:

1. Former oilpatch exec hopes to unseat Rob Ander, s Donna Kennedy-Glans says MP is inaccessible and narrow-minded, by Jeremy Klaszus, March 26, 2009

2. Tory national council takes control of Calgary riding, Yahoo News, February 5, 2009

Why Maurice Vellacott and his Reconstructionist Theories Will Fail

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

With the introduction of Marci McDonald's book; The Armageddon Factor (1), we are now being given an opportunity to debate the enormous influence of the Religious Right on Canadian politics.

And one area that needs a great deal of debate, is the issue of Reconstructionism, which is being organized in the breezeway between Reform-Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott's office and the American 'Conservative movement*'.



C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Stephen Harper


In Lloyd MacKey's book, The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper, he claims that Harper did not come to his "born-again" status from the need to be reborn to escape a lost life, but rather from the results of a cerebral journey.

C.S. Lewis dealt in absolutes, so as one of the theologians introduced to him by Preston Manning, Lewis would be the easiest for an analytical mind to grasp. Stephen Harper is a smart man, but he is not a wise man, and Lewis expressed Christian faith in the simplest of terms.

In fact, it has been those 'simple' terms that have had his critics state that among other things, his theories were "textually careless and theologically unreliable." (2)

Lewis is what is known as an 'apologist', which is described** in part as:

... a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other world views ... Apologists have based their defense of Christianity on historical evidence, philosophical arguments, scientific investigation, rhetorical persuasion and other disciplines.

Rather than being mythological, they try to make Christianity scientific, historical and absolute. For Lewis, it was all-or-nothing and half-heartedness was not to be tolerated. There was no middle ground. In that way he gave permission for religious intolerance, and most definitely intolerance toward anyone not seeking religion at all. To him they were simply "mad men" or "lunatics".

C.S. Lewis has come to be revered by Reconstructionists who want to transform the earth into the "kingdom of God", a necessary action before the second coming of Christ.

In Reconstructionism, the main thrust shifts from the salvaging of lost souls in a doomed society to the reconstruction of a Christian world. The significance of the Reconstructionist movement is not its numbers, but the power of its ideas and their surprisingly rapid acceptance. Many on the Christian Right are unaware that they hold Reconstructionist ideas. Because as a theology it is controversial, even among evangelicals, many who are consciously influenced by it avoid the label. This furtiveness is not, however, as significant as the potency of the ideology itself. Generally, Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of "Biblical Law."

Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality. (3)

Wanting to replace democracy with a theocratic elite, sounds very Leo Strauss, though I suppose that's why neoconservativism and the Religious Right are such a great fit. When Stockwell Day was teaching at the Bentley Bible schools, in his social studies classes he warned students that democratic governments "represent the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien to God's word." (4)

Footnotes:

* "... your country [United States], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world" Stephen Harper 1997 to the Council for National Policy, the vanguard for the American Religous Right (5)

** Wikipedia

Sources:

1. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3

2. C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, By john Beversluis, Prometheus Books, 1985, ISBN 1-59102-531-1

3."Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence: Part 1 -- Overview and Roots," by Frederick Clarkson, March 1994, The Public Eye

4. Bentley, Alberta: Hellfire, Neo-Nazis and Stockwell Day:A two-part look inside the little town that nurtured a would-be prime minister - and some of the most notorious hate-mongers in Canada, By Gordon Laird, NOW Magazine, 2000

5. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

Preston Manning, Morton Blackwell and a Questionable Youth Movement

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In March of 2009, a Conservative Party workshop was held at the University of Waterloo. A student who attended was clever enough to take a tape recorder and what was revealed from the meeting was a clandestine attempt to take over student unions, by setting up a series of front groups.

Audio recordings, photographs and documents that were leaked from a recent Conservative Party student workshop in Waterloo expose a partisan attempt to take over student unions and undermine Ontario Public Interest Research Groups (OPIRGs) on campuses across Ontario.

At a session held in early February by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, campus Conservatives, party campaigners, and a Member of Parliament discussed strategies to gain funding from student unions for the Conservative Party and ways to run for—and win—positions within student unions. (1)

This operation is one of the strategies taught at the Manning Centre's Campus Leadership Training program. From their website:

Has your student government been overrun by extreme left-wing students?

Is freedom of speech being infringed upon on your campus? Are groups on campus using student money to further a left-wing agenda? Do you want to get organized and fight back?

Then the Manning Centre’s Campus Leadership Training is for you. Campus Leadership Seminars introduce aspiring political leaders on campus to the principles and practices of effective political involvement. Topics for these seminars include:

»The Fundamentals of Campaigning
» Political Communications
» How to run an effective Campus Club
» How to win campaigns on campus
» How to build effective coalitions

The Manning Centre is the Canadian spin-off of the Leadership Institute of Morton Blackwell's, and like Blackwell's is funded by wealthy corporate interests. Manning's donor who provided ten million dollars in seed money, preferred to remain anonymous (2), but Blackwell's backers include the DeVos family of Amway fame and Richard Mellon Scaife, an American billionaire with oil, aluminum and newspaper interests.

Famous alumni include Karl Rove and Ralph Reed, the man who came to Canada to teach our Religious Right how to get Stephen Harper elected. He is the founder of the Christian Coalition that is affiliated with other Right-wing Christian extremist organizations, like Focus on the Family, all falling under the umbrella of the Council for National Policy. Reed made headlines recently when he was embroiled in a scandal involving casinos and Jack Abramoff.

Another graduate of the school is Reform-Conservative MP Rob Anders, who is also a member of Focus on the Family. Morton Blackwell helped to found both the Religious Right and the Council for National Policy in the U.S. Ander's former legislative assistant, Trevor Cazemier , was an invited guest at a conference held by the Council for National Policy in 1998, and was sponsored by Republican strategist, Mark Montini. (3) Stephen Harper had spoke there the year before (4).

According to Marci McDonald there are 700 Canadian graduates of Blackwell's school all working for the movement in Canada. (2)

The Leadership Institute is also running the same kind of clandestine operations as Manning, under their Campus Leadership Program.

The structure of Blackwell's Campus Leadership Program is simple. The Leadership Institute trains promising conservative college graduates over the summer and dispatches them to campuses in the fall with a mandate to start conservative student organizations. Need $500 and some ideas to start a combative right-wing campus publication? The institute would love to help you.

Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell,this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans," says CLP director Dan Flynn. (5)

What these institutes teach is a kind of guerrilla warfare using several duplicitous techniques, including something called controlled controversy. I'm going to show some examples in this chapter, from both the Canadian and American groups.

Continued: Ann Coulter, Tom Tancredo and a Little Controlled Controversy

Sources:
1. Conservative Party strategy to take over student unions exposed, By Rebecca Granovsky-Larsen, Editor-in-Chief and Nora Loreto, News Editor, Ryerson Free Press, March 16, 2009

2. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8

3. Tysons Corner meeting, CNP, Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, McLean, Virginia, May 1-2, 1998

4. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

5. My Right-wing Degree, By Horwitz, May 24, 2005

Spanking and Dominionism, From Kelly Block to James Dobson

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In October of 2009, Reform-Conservative Member of Parliament, Kelly Block, sent out a tax-payer funded flyer to her constituents that asked the question, "Are Parents Criminals?” The intent of this was to drum up support for her opposition to a senate bill that would see parents charged for inflicting corporal punishment on their children.

According to the Star Pheonix:

“The Liberal dominated Senate already voted to approve this terrible idea last year,” the mailout says. “(The bill) is designed to make moms and dads into criminals for using the traditional punishment of spanking to teach their kids right from wrong.”

Block did not return multiple interview requests seeking comment.

What Block was referring to was Liberal senator Céline Hervieux-Payette's, Bill S-209. Believing as many do that spanking or any form of corporal punishment can encourage violent behaviour, the senator felt a need to introduce consequences.

She includes the following video on her site:

While section 43 of the criminal code, prohibited spanking, it did not allow for criminal charges to be laid against the person inflicting the harm.

Kelly Block was not the only member of the Religious Right to be upset.

Charles' McVety's Family Action Coalition, suggested that "... section 43 of the criminal code [is] to be rescinded. That section allows parents to use "reasonable force" to correct behaviors of their (not the state's) children. If that allowance for spanking was rescinded then any parent who reasonably spanks a child could face criminal charges of assault."

REAL Women of Canada had already presented their views on their website:

The arrogant political left, which looks contemptuously down on those who disagree with its supposedly enlightened views, is attempting to revive the spanking issue. Apparently the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada on the subject, handed down a year ago, was only a stopgap in the onward journey to ban the spanking of children in Canada. (2)

I'm not sure what 'arrogance' has to do with wanting to protect children, but spanking has come to mean something more to the Christian nationalist movement.

James Dobson, Dominionism or Destruction

James Dobson is the Founder of Focus on the Family and a leading member of the American Religious Right movement. He provided 1.6 million dollars to help set up the Canadian Focus on the Family group, founded by Stephen Harper's deputy chief of staff, Darrel Reid.

He has written extensively on the issue of spanking, and though he is a child psychologist, it's never from a scientific argument, only Biblical.

In his book, The Strong Willed Child he makes an extraordinary case to justify harsh discipline. In it he speaks of his small dog Siggie, who he claims to love very much, but when he was away for awhile, the dog had picked up some bad habits. And when he disobeyed him, Dobson retaliated. He describes the scene:

“At eleven o’clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.

“On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. ...“I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me ‘reason’ with Mr. Freud.”

“What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!” (3)

What the good Mr. Dobson describes is animal cruelty and the fact the he outweighed him 200 to 12, makes the whole scene even more horrific. That man clearly should not own a pet.

He goes on from "destruction" being the only thing the dog understood, to the need to discipline children, and even uses capital letters:

"JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD — ONLY MORE SO.” (3)

And he doesn't just say a child but "a little child ", like the little 12 pound dog. And after describing ways that children will challenge their parent's authority, he states:

“Perhaps this tendency toward self-will is the essence of ‘original sin’ which has infiltrated the human family. It certainly explains why I place such stress on the proper response to willful defiance during childhood, for that rebellion can plant the seeds of personal disaster.” (3)

Nothing clinical befitting his profession, but children and "original sin".

You do get some insight into the reasons for his disturbing behaviour from this bio:

Dobson's own family was a bit out of the ordinary. His father was a preacher who often told the story that he had tried to pray before he could even talk. His mother routinely beat their son with her shoes, her belt, and once, a 16-pound girdle. His parents somehow instilled so much guilt in young Dobson that he answered his father's fervent altar-call, weeping at the front of a crowded church service and crying out for God's forgiveness for all his sins, when he was three years old. "It makes no sense, but I know it happened," Dobson still says of being born again as a toddler.

This would certainly prove senator Céline Hervieux-Payette's belief that children learn what they see. However, the spanking issue may be more complex.

For those who have studied the Christian nationalist movement, which is also referred to as 'Dominionism', submissiveness is required to make it work.

In a politico-religious context, dominionism (also called subjectionism) is the tendency among some conservative politically-active Christians, especially in the United States, to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action. The goal is either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law. (4)

Movement conservatives see the end result as a nation whose laws are based on the Old Testament. There can be no exception. And they are very clear in their understanding that fundamentalist Christians must assume control of all levels of government, beginning with school and municipal boards. It stems from Genesis, where God commissions man to exercise "dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

George Grant, one of their founders (and I will be writing a lot more on this) states:

"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less... Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ." (5)

It's up to us to decide what kind of Canada we want for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. This is not a movement with any flexibility and it does not represent Canadian values. When Stephen Harper decided to exploit the religious right for political gain, I'm not sure if he understood just what that meant. He is a "born-again" Christian, but I believe he worships on the altar of capitalism. This is now out of his control, I'm afraid.

Sources:

1. MP favours spanking, Star Phoenix, October 5, 2009

2. ATTEMPT TO REVIVE SPANKING ISSUE, REAL Women of Canada, Jan/Feb 2005

3. The Strong Willed Child, By James Dobson, Living Books, 1992, ISBN-10: 0842359249

4. Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture, By Michael Frost, Hendrickson Publishers, ISBN 1565636708, Pg. 235

5. The Changing of the Guard, By George Grant, 1987, as quoted in "American Theocracy: Who is Trying to Turn America into a Theocracy?

Dangerous Liasons: Christian Legal Fellowship and Alliance Defense Fund

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 2004, a twelve-year-old Ohio boy, James Nixon, won the right to wear a T-shirt to school, that read: Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder ", after his parents sued the school, who asked him not to. (1)

His case was handled by the Alliance Defense Fund, who challenged the courts, not on freedom of speech, but freedom of religion. They used the protection of religious freedom to justify hatred and exploited a child to do so.

A student at Sheridan Middle School in Thornville won a federal court ruling Thursday allowing him to wear a shirt to school that insults homosexuals, Muslims and abortion-rights supporters.

On Sept. 1, 2004, the first day of school, seventh-grader James Nixon wore a T-shirt that read on the front, "INTOLERANT. Jesus said ... I am the way, the truth and the life. John 14:6". On the back, the T-shirt read, "Homosexuality is a sin! Islam is a lie! Abortion is murder! Some issues are just black and white!" (2)

Marlin Maddoux and the Alliance Defense League

One of the founders of the American Defense League who came to the aid of young James Nixon, was Marlin Maddoux (1993-2004), a pioneer of Christian radio broadcasting.

Newspapers usually describe the ADF, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., as a "conservative" group but give little additional information. USA Today even called the ADF "a legal alliance that promotes religious freedom...."

Critics say a description such as that doesn't even begin to tell the story. Far from supporting religious liberty, the ADF champions the exact opposite: It was formed by a band of television preachers and radio broadcasters to advance the Religious Right's perspective in the courts.

The ADF, watchdogs at Americans United say, champions a radical agenda to destroy the wall of separation between church and state. It even has close ties to the most extreme faction of the Religious Right--a movement that wants to create a harsh fundamentalist Christian theocracy in America.

Since its founding, the ADF has played a role in nearly every church-state case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court and many lower federal courts. Since 1994, the ADF has directly or partially funded cases dealing with government aid to religion, religion in public schools, abortion, gay rights and religiously based censorship. Throughout, the organization's goal has been the same: merge religion and government. (3)

Maddoux was also a member of the Council for National Policy, which appear to represent the pro-military arm of the Religious Right. It was at a conference of the CNP, held in Montreal in 1997, where Stephen Harper was invited to deliver a speech tearing down the Canadian identity.

He told this group of 'muscular' Christians that: "your country, and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world." (4)

Another founding member of ADL is James Dobson, the man who created Focus on the Family. Dobson provided the seed money for a Canadian branch of Focus, started up by Stephen Harper's deputy chief of staff, Darrel Reid. He also indirectly poured thousands of dollars into Harper's election campaign, focusing on the issue of same-sex marriage, which became one of Harper's election promises (to scrap Bill C-38).

Dobson is also a founding member of the Council for National Policy with a strong belief in creating an aggressive theocracy in both the United States and Canada.

From the beginning, the ADF was clear about what it wanted to achieve. Its founders announced the group's formation in 1994 with a huge direct-mail campaign aimed at fundamentalist Christians. Maddoux and five other high-profile Religious Right leaders endorsed the effort: James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family; Bill Bright, president of Campus Crusade for Christ; D. James Kennedy, a television evangelist and head of Coral Ridge Ministries; the Rev. Donald Wildmon, president of the American Family Association; and Larry Burkett, president of Christian Financial Concepts (now Crown Financial Ministries), a fundamentalist-oriented financial services company.

In a letter soliciting donations for the ADF, Dobson wrote, "By pooling resources, substantial amounts of money can be channeled into a critical aspect of the civil war for values---namely, the legal battle in our nation's courts for the sanctity of life, the defense of religious freedom, and the preservation of traditional family values." (3)

And as you can see from their own website, James Dobson is indeed a founding member of the Alliance Defense Fund.

Cindy Silver and the Religious Right

During the 2006 election campaign, when Ralph Reed suggested that the Religious Right in Canada bring forward as many Christian nationalists (extremists, fundamentalists) as possible, one they hand selected to run was Cindy Silver.

Silver was a lawyer with the Christian Legal Fellowship, the Canadian franchise of the Alliance Defense Fund, and one of her most prominent clients was Focus on the Family Canada, then run by Darrel Reid, Stephen Harper's deputy chief of staff.

She had the endorsement of former Reform Party MP, Sharon Hayes, who is best remembered as the woman who issued a press release on her House of Commons letterhead, that accused the Chinese of eating fetuses, urging Liberal ministers attending the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing to reject "Chinese government policies that endorse the mandated one-child policy, the murder of inmates for body parts and the alleged consumption of human fetuses as health food." (5)

She also presented a petition to Parliament in 1997, asking the government not to overturn the rights of parents to engage in corporal punishment.

These people draw to the attention of the House that section 43 recognizes the primary role of parents in raising and disciplining their children, that the federal government is under pressure from various sources including the UN to change section 43, that the removal of section 43 would strengthen the role of bureaucrats and weaken the role of parents, and that the government now continues to fund research by people opposed to its removal.

These petitioners request Parliament to affirm the duty of parents to responsibly
raise their children according to their own conscience and beliefs and to retain section 43 in Canada's Criminal Code as it is currently worded.

Cindy Silver shared those views and as part of a letter to the editor wrote:

"... properly administered corporal punishment educates children to the dangers of disobedience, defiance, selfishness, sassiness, cruelty to others and actions that put the child's life in danger. It teaches them self-control and respect for authority - two characteristics necessary in socially responsible children." (6)

But what concerned the citizens of North Vancouver-Surrey, where Silver was running, was her views on things like abortion and homosexuality. In 2003 she had appeared before a House of Commons committee, as a private citizen, (not representing her client Focus on the Family), and made the following statement:

During the marriage trials, it became evident that EGALE and their partner groups for challenging marriage are not simply seeking equal benefits before and under the law, but are really seeking to ensure and expedite broad social approval for same-sex unions and, by implication, for homosexual conduct. It is really this that is at the heart of the marriage challenge. It is an attempt to use the disciplinary power of language to exact change in people's beliefs and attitudes regarding the moral nature of homosexual conduct.

Sharon Hayes now sits on the board of directors of Focus on the Family, so it shows just how connected they are to James Dobson, the Council for National Policy, and the American Religious Right.

Christian Legal Fellowship:

As mentioned above, Christian Legal Fellowship is the Canadian franchise of the Alliance Defense Fund, a group that challenges the constitution based on freedom of religion, by using legal justification for endorsing hatred toward mostly gays, Muslims and women's advocacy groups.

They also oppose anything that will stand in the way of corporate interests.

A member of Stephen Harper's caucus, and one of the hand picked social conservatives of the Religious Right, is also a lawyer with CLF and has founded a spin off organization the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

Weston is the founder of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF). He said he founded the group in 2002 to promote and uphold the rights of Canadians against governments that undermine the rights of individuals.

Weston’s foes on the political left use more critical language to describe the CCF goals. The Ontario Health Coalition described the CCF as an “extremely right-wing” legal advocacy group that uses the Charter of Rights to promote a conservative agenda, including the end of medicare.

In 2005 Weston talked to the Calgary Herald about his counterintuitive approach to the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] ... “It’s here, there’s not much point in wishing it weren’t. Now, we need to make it mean what it is supposed to mean,” Weston told the Herald. “Conservatives must reclaim it for conservative values.” (7)

His group was behind the attack ads running in the U.S. against President Obama's health care plan, by using one of their clients Shona Holmes, to embellish a story of a "life threatening" illness. (8) Weston's partner, who is now running the Canadian Constitution Federation is John Carpay, an old Reform Party candidate, who is also involved with the Fraser Institute and Preston Manning's the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

What I find rather disturbing about this movement, is their heavy use of military terms to describe domestic initiatives.

A medieval knight in jousting attire stared from the badges of delegates to the national conference of the Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF). The language of battle resonated through the late September proceedings and permeated the pages of the event program.

Carefully selected verses from Scripture buttressed the conference theme. "Therefore take on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm" (Eph. 6:13). "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. Do everything in love" (1 Cor. 16:13,14).

"As part of a national grassroots association of Christian lawyers, you have aligned with a band of faithful Christian professionals--servants of the most high--committed to standing guard for Canada, its religious freedoms, its traditional family and sanctity of life," writes CLF executive director Ruth Ross. "You have also demonstrated Christ's love, compassion and righteousness to a lost and hurting world." (9)

Marcie McDonald also revealed something else about the group after attending one of their conferences. The guest speaker was Benjamin Bull of the American Defense Fund, who after showing a rather alarming video, sheepishly apologized by saying "It works one way with donors, and another way here." (10)

Ah yes, there it is. "Donors". What it usually boils down to with the Religious Right: MONEY! Self righteous sanctimoniousness is a very lucrative business indeed, not that this group doesn't believe that they are at war. As James Dobson stated in that "fund raising" letter: "By pooling resources, substantial amounts of money can be channeled into a critical aspect of the civil war for values ..."

Unfortunately those "values" include racism, sexism and discrimination, which fall under their "freedom of religion". The religion of hate, that justifies a twelve-year-old boy wearing a T-shirt that reads: "INTOLERANT. Jesus said ... I am the way, the truth and the life. John 14:6". [On the back] "Homosexuality is a sin! Islam is a lie! Abortion is murder! Some issues are just black and white!" (2)

Sources:

1. The God Delusion, By Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, ISBN: 13-978-0-618-68000-9, Pg. 23

2. Thornville student wins free speech case, Court protects shirt condemning abortion, gays, Islam, By Erik Johns, Newark Advocate, August 19, 2005

3. The Alliance Defense Fund's hidden agenda: how a TV preachers' front group is bankrolling the legal crusade to block same-sex marriage, Goliath Media, June 1, 2004

4. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

5. Wikipedia from Parliamentary Library

6. Vancouver Sun, 1994

7. New MP profile: West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky's John Weston, By Vancouver Sun, October 16, 2008

8. Shona Holmes and The Canadian Constitution Federation, By Bene Diction, Religious Right Alert, August 2, 2009

9. Onward Christian lawyers, By Doug Koop, Editorial Director, ChristianWeek.org, October 15, 2007

10. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8, Pg. 291