Monday, October 3, 2011

Sex, lies, and the politics of hate

Remember last week's awful ad (new window) from the "Institute for Canadian Values" about Ontario's proposed sex ed curriculum? With its blatantly anti-GLBTQ message and manipulative imagery, it even got the National Post to apologize for running it in the first place.

Well, there's another one. A pamphlet. And according to Torontoist it was paid for by Ontario's Progressive (ha!) Conservative Party:


The Globe and Mail gives Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak's defence of the publication:
When asked if he supported the message, Mr. Hudak turned the question around on the Liberals and suggested the party was out of touch with mainstream voters.

“My little girl Miller – it’s her birthday today – is just four and she has started JK,” he said. “The notion that Dalton McGuinty thinks a priority in education is sex-education curriculum starting at Grade 1 when they should be learning their ABCs and how to tie their shoes is another example of how Dalton McGuinty has lost touch with mainstream Ontario.”
The Globe has also endorsed the Liberal Premier, Dalton McGuinty, for re-election on Thursday's provincial vote.

Interestingly, the quotes in the ad are not from any proposed provincial curriculum, but rather from a Toronto District School Board booklet on "Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism".

And as CBC points out, the copy is full of misrepresentations and outright fabrications.

The flyer includes one quote from the document —"cross-dressing for six-year olds"— that can't be found anywhere in the TDSB document. The flyer also says the quotes are taken from the K-12 curriculum. But the quotes are not included in the curriculum, only in the anti-homophobia resource guide.
This election campaign was already ugly. Now it's evil, too.

(Thanks to Martha W. for the tip)

2 comments:

  1. I have two reactions to this:

    1. It's scummy.

    2. I don't want to get caught up in the outrage game, because that's the whole idea: we get mad and use this to justify louder, more strident positions on our side, then they mine our new positions for raw material to get outraged over on their side, and the cycle goes on and on.

    So let's respond to scare tactics with engagement and constructive discussion, rather than the manufactured outrage they're meant to invoke.

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  2. BTW, I didn't find any of that manufactured outrage in this posting, in case my previous comment seemed to imply otherwise.

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