Over at my Christian right article in The Mark, Christine suggests that the failure to pass anti-abortion legislation does not necessarily constitute a defeat for Canadian SoCons:
Voice-giving is a powerful thing, and the Christian right have it. I have to disagree with you that having private member bills put together and lost somehow reduces the power of social conversavitism and religion in Canadian society. Whether a bill passes or not, that kind of attention and positioning in authoritative dialogue is meaningful to cultural identity and impacts individuals relate to one another, change or confirm their values and make sense of the world around them. The passage of a bill as some concrete victory or loss is only part an event around which ways of thinking are suggested, questioned or naturalized in our society.
-Christine
In other words.. "How offensive that they have a voice."
ReplyDeleteI happen to be pro-choice, and, truly, if the Conservative party seriously challenged that, I would no longer support them.
However, the not-so-subtle message in Christine's post is as follows:
"It isn't enough that they don't succeed. We shouldn't even permit them to have the dialogue, because, that dialogue encourages "wrong thinking".
Is Christine, perchance, a hearing officer in a Human Rights tribunal?
Just a guess.
And what's the remedy for when a small group of yappy extremists tries to drown everybody else out?
ReplyDelete