Changing views should be cause for celebration

Our esteemed deputy premier seems to believe people wake up some morning and — perhaps while singing merrily in the shower — suddenly cast off their old, nasty views and prejudices as snakes shed skin.

That appears to be Sarah Hoffman’s hardnosed response to the rather human and refreshingly honest comments by the newlyinstalled interim leader of the United Conservative Party, who said he no longer holds the same attitudes toward the sexuality of others as he did a decade ago.

Nathan Cooper’s one-time association with an advocacy group opposing same-sex marriage was dredged up as soon as he took the temporary reigns of this new party, the NDP lot realizing they need to tar and feather these united conservatives as knuckle-dragging, gay bashers a.s.a.p. if they’ve any hope of keeping their day jobs after the next provincial election.

“Over a 10-year period, you learn a lot. Values and views sometimes change. There are lots of things I didn’t understand then I know now,” was Cooper’s forthright answer to the questions about his past affiliations. He now supports all manner of gay rights. Good for him.

That’s not good enough for Hoffman. She wants to know exactly when his views changed. What’s he supposed to reply — it occurred on a Wednesday in July 2011 at precisely 10.37 a.m. when, in a blinding, sublime moment, the truth was revealed and I fell on bended knee asking for forgiveness for past transgressions?

Of course Hoffman’s only engaging in hardball politics, which is why she’ll always wear her daft “sewer rats” comment (She accused Wildrose members of hanging out with sewer rats, and later apologized) because — fair’s fair — those are the rules she herself enjoys playing by. It’s why politics is the saddest profession.

Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; it brings enlightenment.

Still, Cooper’s answer will ring true with ordinary people who are much more nuanced and therefore endlessly fascinating. Yes, people do change their views and minds. It would be a miserable and dull world if they didn’t.

Frankly I’m often quite queasy at the views I held 40 years ago, my only defence being such attitudes were par for the course at that time and place. So why have they changed? Because, while easy to dismiss and decry entire races, religions and people of different sexual desires than ours, it’s much harder to denigrate individuals from those same groups when we suddenly meet them in our daily lives. Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; it brings enlightenment.

Of course such changes do not happen overnight. It begins gradually, yet the more we mix the quicker we change until — surprise, surprise — we discover that actually most people are decent and have many more things in common than we’d ever imagined. We’ve slowly shed the skin. We are, again, naked and human. Oh, and to those who think they’re now the very pinnacles of enlightenment? Return in a century and you’ll find your views dismissed as Neanderthal, and if you have a statue it might be getting pulled down.

That’s why it’s disheartening to see uniformed city police officers banned from marching in this year’s Pride Parade.

Imagine in places on this planet where people whose sexual identity does not conform to one of two strict disciplines were told, not only did they no longer face death, stoning or imprisonment, but the forces of law and order were actually going to march alongside them in a public parade — not secretly but in full dress uniform and carrying a rainbow flag to show support?

Come on: imagine being secretly gay i n Saudi Arabia and waking up to that news?

Ah, but not in Calgary. Here there are games afoot, old battles to be fought on an empty battlefield, not because they are true and just but because if such people didn’t keep protesting what else would they do?

Anyhow, I believe to my bones in the eventual triumph of ordinary people though, unlike Hoffman, I doubt it will happen overnight.

So yes, the police, proudly wearing our city’s uniform, will again march in the Pride Parade. They will overcome. Some day.