Juno News - August 26, 2019


Most Canadians are Christian. Why can't Andrew Scheer be？


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

170.5582

Word count

935

Sentence count

36

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Andrew Scheer's comments on gay marriage in the House of Commons 15 years ago have been taken as evidence that he is unfit to be prime minister. Why is a politician who has a religious or spiritual opinion on a controversial issue such as gay marriage not fit to be in politics?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I come with breaking news that will shock you to your very core and rattle the heart of the country.
00:00:07.640 Nearly 15 years ago, Andrew Scheer delivered a speech in the House of Commons in which
00:00:11.800 he defended a traditional definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.
00:00:19.380 Okay, well, maybe it's not all that shocking that 15 years ago someone stood up and shared a belief
00:00:25.480 that millions of Canadians share. Regardless of what you think about marriage, regardless of what
00:00:31.160 Andrew Scheer thinks about marriage, it shouldn't be radical that in 2005 when Parliament voted on
00:00:37.820 this and that vote was very close that a Conservative MP at the time who voted against legalizing gay
00:00:44.420 marriage in Canada had a position that was against gay marriage in Canada. But the problem is that
00:00:50.820 this is now coming up as though it's revolutionary and more importantly coming up now as though it's
00:00:56.440 relevant. Liberal MP Ralph Goodale posted a video of this speech by Andrew Scheer, at the time a young
00:01:03.720 Conservative member of Parliament, and the media ran with this basically making the point that Andrew
00:01:09.240 Scheer is unfit to be Prime Minister because he made this proclamation in 2005. Now I'm not here to
00:01:16.260 litigate or legislate the idea of gay marriage. I support legalized marriage equality in Canada. I
00:01:22.780 don't think that a religious or spiritual definition of marriage should be the law of the land. But the
00:01:28.520 point is this was an issue that was vigorously debated in Canada and there were people that came
00:01:34.040 down on both sides of it. There were Conservatives that supported gay marriage, there were Liberals that
00:01:38.580 opposed gay marriage, and that's why that vote in 2005 was a close one. Moreover, Ralph Goodale,
00:01:46.260 himself, voted twice against legalizing gay marriage when it came up in 1999 and a few years
00:01:53.380 prior to that as well. Two votes where a Liberal dominated Parliament voted against legalizing gay
00:02:00.580 marriage. This is an issue in Canada that came up a number of times before it ultimately became
00:02:05.420 the law of the land. But let's look at the facts here. According to Statistics Canada and more recently
00:02:11.420 a Pew Research study, the number of people in this country who identify as Christian specifically
00:02:17.640 is the majority. According to census data, there are about 22 million people in Canada,
00:02:23.220 so just about two-thirds of the country who identify as Christian. And when you look at the
00:02:28.120 denominational breakdowns of that and you take out the Anglican Church, which has a mixed position
00:02:32.560 on gay marriage, and the United Church, which is pro-gay marriage, you're left with just shy of 20
00:02:38.740 million Christian Canadians that are part of denominations that oppose gay marriage. When you
00:02:44.920 look at other religions in Canada, Jews, Muslims, the Abrahamic faiths, by and large, oppose gay
00:02:52.280 marriage. You have to assume that not everyone who's in one of these faiths has the same position on
00:02:57.420 the issue, but regardless, you're left with at least half of the country that is part of a religion
00:03:02.920 that has the same view of marriage that Andrew Scheer expressed in 2005. So why is a politician who has
00:03:10.360 that view unworthy of being a politician? The problem is that the Liberal Party of Canada and
00:03:16.380 the mainstream media want to have 100% unanimity on their positions. They don't think there should
00:03:22.460 be any debate on any issue in this country that they view as being too contentious. Justin Trudeau not
00:03:29.240 just said that the Liberal Party is a pro-choice party, but said that no single person who is pro-life
00:03:35.580 is worthy or deserving or allowed to be a member of the Liberal Caucus, a Liberal candidate.
00:03:42.840 And what the Liberals are trying to do now is basically say that no one who believes in the
00:03:46.620 definition of marriage that Andrew Scheer espoused in 2005, despite his repeated claims that he is not
00:03:52.300 going to do anything about this issue, should be allowed to be in politics. This type of viewpoint is
00:03:58.760 not just insulting to Canadians of faith, but it should be to all Canadians because the Liberals
00:04:03.100 are saying that their belief is the only one that deserves to be in the public square. And the fact
00:04:09.860 that they're doing this to a devout Catholic is relevant because I don't think they would ever dare 1.00
00:04:15.160 to say this to a Muslim who most likely would adhere to the same position. The Liberals don't take aim at
00:04:22.040 pro-life or anti-gay marriage Muslims in the same way they do at white Christians espousing these views, 0.96
00:04:29.320 because it's politically saleable to attack Christians and Christian Orthodoxy in a way that
00:04:34.760 it isn't with other faiths. Religion may be on the decline in the West, and traditional religious
00:04:40.600 orthodoxy may well be under a new level of scrutiny that it hasn't before. But that doesn't mean that
00:04:46.520 people that have traditional religious views should be shoved out of the public sphere.
00:04:52.040 Remember, the Liberals are the party that says that government needs to reflect the diversity
00:04:56.440 of the country it represents. Why not the diversity of ideas?
00:05:01.480 This is precisely why True North is going to be aggressively covering this election, covering the
00:05:06.840 stories the mainstream media isn't, covering perspectives the mainstream media isn't. But we also
00:05:12.200 are doing this without the money the mainstream media has. If you can chip in to support our election
00:05:17.080 coverage fund, please do. There's a link in the description box. All donations are tax deductible.
00:05:22.920 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.