Tuesday, February 20, 2007

From The Right Wingnuts

I've been tracking how the right wingnuts are busy trying to make a case for how "religious freedoms" are being "suppressed" in Canada for quite some time.

For the most part the effort to date has basically been a bunch of loudmouths standing up and recycling long dead talking points. (Guys, flogging a dead horse is one thing, digging it out of the grave and flogging it some more is just starting to get a little morbid)

Our latest entry in the "Omigod There's A Crisis" brigade comes from Canada Family Action Coalition - an effort run by Brian Rushfeldt and Charles McVety. (Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, MP Rob Anders has spent time working on their behalf as well.)

On the front page of their website today, we find CFAC rolling out a whole whack of stories about the evils of the Charter of Rights. (God forbid that rights would apply to anybody who doesn't subscribe to their "christian" beliefs).



And their headlines section is filled with stories about the court system, rights issues etc.:



Most of what they have put forward is recycles and recopies of articles from news sources such the National Post and a couple of John Ibbitson's columns from
The Globe and Mail
. (Hmmm ... I wonder if those two papers realize that this website is reproducing their articles - in their entirety?)

One of the more imaginative screeds is If you're a Christian charity after public money - God help you, ripped from The Daily Telegraph, wherein the author somehow manages to make the claim that all sorts of "good charitable works" are being refused funding because they are Christian. (Of course, the reality is that if they want public funds, they probably need to drop the proselytizing that they tend to roll in with their charity work.

They couldn't possibly leave it at that, no, they have to dredge up this crap about how "Christians are under attack":

Consider the long list of anti-Christian books that have been published in recent months. Here are just a few samples of more than thirty similar titles, all from mainstream publishers:

* "American Fascists: the Christian right and the war on America.”
* "The baptizing of America: the religious right's plans for the rest of us."
* “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”
* "Piety & politics: the right-wing assault on religious freedom."
* "Atheist universe: the thinking person's answer to Christian fundamentalism."
* "Thy kingdom come: how the religious right distorts the faith and threatens America.
* "Religion gone bad: the hidden dangers of the Christian right."

What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam. Does anyone seriously think America is more seriously jeopardized by Christian conservatives than by Islamic zealots? I fear that many Americans believe just that - in the same way that many pre-WWII westerners considered Churchill a bigger threat than Hitler.


While this is an import from the United States, we have to remember that the evangelicals in Canada take their cues from what happens in the US. (Amazingly silent on the whole Ted Haggard affair, aren't they?)

Anyhow, I fully expect the coming months to contain a full-on assault on the Constitution and Charter.

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