7-03-07, 9:30 am

Pride 2007 Statement from the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League of Canada


Together with our allies at dozens of Pride events across Canada this summer, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, two-spirited persons, and queer and questioning youth are celebrating important struggles to achieve equality and social justice. These events are refreshing and important demonstrations of the kind of unity which is essential to all the progressive movements of Canada.

It's just this kind of unity which is required if we are to block an insidious right-wing agenda intent on promoting hatred and divisions among us. The Communist Party of Canada lends its enthusiastic and full support to queer and all progressive struggles. We send our best greetings to all those taking part in LGBTT Pride events.

We all know that the gains of recent years for LGBTT communities will face dramatically sharper challenges if Stephen Harper were to win the next federal election. Although the corporate-controlled media wants Canadians to believe that Harper and his cohorts have 'mellowed' and have retreated from their hardline positions against LGBTT workplace equity, legal equality and reproductive rights, they actually pose a direct threat to the future of Canada, including our advances toward social equality.

While key sectors of big business (both domestic and global capital), argue that the Conservatives need a majority 'to make Parliament work', it is very clearly time to drive out the Conservatives.

Alarmingly, Harper and his advisers are already shifting many policies, through quiet administrative moves and by their dangerous drive towards 'deep integration' with the United States. To improve his electoral chances, Harper is keeping a lid on outspoken MPs, but this is a waiting game and will end if he wins a majority. The election of an even larger number of fundamentalist, bigoted MPs would dramatically enhance the power of the minority who want to restore the patriarchal nuclear family as the only 'acceptable' family model.

Stephen Harper's personal anti-equality positions are clear. He has voted against every piece of same-sex marriage legislation. He has pledged that a Conservative government would not raise the abortion issue 'in its first term' - leaving his options open if re-elected. Last summer he snubbed the international AIDS conference held in Toronto.

And most Canadians have noticed a deluge of danger signals from the Tories:

* proposals to give authorities wide access to monitor phone calls and email * the new 'no-fly' list and other violations of civil liberties * the expansion of CSIS and the RCMP (which both have a history of homophobia) * the appointment of anti-choice, anti-gay judges to provincial courts; * the presence of 'Focus on the Family' zealots within the top circles of Tory advisors * the so-called 'Defence Of Religion Act' to allow wider promotion of hatred * tax changes to promote the patriarchal family model * the moves to gut Status Of Women Canada * the end of government funding to promote equality * legislation to criminalize youth by raising the age of consent from 14 to 16 * regulations to limit young people's access to condoms and abortions.

The Harper and Tory positions reveal that homophobia remains a powerful force within the Canadian state, despite the cultural and legal shift in favour of equality and diversity. Police and prosecutors are still reluctant to press for stiffer punishments against those who commit homophobic hate crimes, raids on gay bathhouses continue, and Canada Customs is still seizing literature ordered by bookstores which serve the LGBTT community. Homophobic regulations against blood donors remain in place.

And there are many other important issues being raised this summer, such as:

* the need for stronger action to defend the rights of queer and questioning youth by pressing politicians, school trustees, administrators and teachers to follow the example of those across the country who have shown strong leadership. Queer youth and students still face prevailing heterosexist attitudes, harassment, and even homophobic violence despite the welcome growth of gay-straight alliances in schools.

The urgency of more school boards taking positive and systemic steps towards protecting LGBTT students and staff in the face of resistance at every level (note the B.C. Liberal government's recent vote against a proposal to include an anti-homophobia clause in a 'school conduct codes' bill.

* the conscious targeting of immigrant and religious communities by groups which spread hatred. The use of the so-called 'war on terror' to promote 'racial profiling' to strip away civil liberties for the Muslim and Arab communities in North America.

* the need to act on the concept that 'an injury to one is an injury to all' with the knowledge that our democratic freedoms can only be protected by standing together, united in our diversity against hatred and war.

* our fight to defeat those who would turn back the clock, such as candidates whose nominations are backed by fundamentalist groups and their aim to turn Parliament into a weapon against reproductive rights and LGBTT equality while serving corporate interests, destroying democratic rights, rolling back gender equality, gutting social programs, privatizing all public assets and splintering the public school system, in their drive for profits. (Note that in the name of 'traditional family values,' such candidates are adopting the U.S. Republican strategy of using 'wedge issues' to promote the politics of hatred.)

Like racism, sexism, and national chauvinism, homophobia and transphobia are weapons used by ruling classes to divide working people across Canada. Unfortunately, even within our labour and people's movements much more work is needed to ensure that defending the rights of LGBTT members and citizens is a priority, not an afterthought. The good news is that a growing and clear majority, especially younger Canadians, support full equality rights. The key to our progress will lay in building broad coalitions committed to fighting for a genuine People's Alternative to this neo-liberal agenda, based on unity between labour and our people's movements of youth and students, women, seniors, environmentalists, peace activists, our LGBTT community, aboriginal people, immigrants and other racialized communities, farmers and very many others.

Ultimately, this kind of wider social struggle will lead us all towards full social emancipation. Achieving genuine people's power in a future socialist Canada, will allow us to build an economy which is both socially owned and democratically controlled; to eliminate all forms of exploitation and oppression; to defend our sovereignty and protect the environment; to ensure that hatred and bigotry become relics of the past; to create a society in which, as Karl Marx wrote, 'the free development of each is the condition for the development of all.'

From People's Voice