Trost’s actions pathetic and an embarrassment

That Brad Trost’s Conservative leadership bid is quickly becoming an embarrassment to his federal party isn’t really the problem.

Ironically, the convoluted Conservative May 27, 2017, leadership vote — a preferential ballot in which each of the 338 federal seats will have an equal 100 votes — neatly screens out crank leadership candidates who don’t have broadbased appeal. So does the party’s $100,000 entry fee and $5 million spending maximum. Frankly, it’s doubtful we’ll see Trost’s name on that final ballot.

Nor is the issue Trost’s social conservatives views, per se, which include his opposition to gay marriage.

That Trost wishes to represent social conservative viewpoint in this leadership race is certainly his right. After all, it is not uncommon for radical voices to be heard in leadership races (though it is absolutely common for parties — be they NDP, Conservatives or whatever — to quickly dispense with such radical views).

However, it’s the way Trost is expressing his view in his federal Conservative leadership run — the notion that his personal views supersede the views, and even the rights, of others — that is simply unacceptable.

But what might be even worse is the way in which Trost is now trivializing both modern, ongoing social concerns and even our worst historical injustices. This is simply intolerable — and offensive.

In doing this, Trost has adopted the Donald Trump political methodology of falsely feeding the notion that it’s actually the most privileged in our society who somehow are now the victims — the very thing widening social divisions south of the border.

To see it creep into our politics is sad. It needs to be called out.

It began with Trost’s proud proclamation that he’s a “political realist” who recognizes he has no realistic prospect of changing Conservative Party policy, which now supports gay marriage. Alas, that hasn’t dampened his interest in firing up divisive sentiments among some fundamentalist Christians in this country that they somehow are being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

“So many social conservatives are now feeling discriminated against, and that’s why I think it’s still an issue that has relevance,” Trost said.

Trost bases this on the controversy over the private Christian Trinity Western University failing to get its law school accredited because its own code prohibits sexual intimacy outside traditional heterosexual marriage. That such a policy is discriminatory and defies both Canadian human rights codes and laws seems lost on Trost.

Not stopping there, Trost attended a rally in front of the Ontario legislature Wednesday to protest changes to that province’s sexual education curriculum. There, he made an absolutely bizarre proclamation:

“The most tragic incident in our history was the residential schools and that was the underlying problem: parental rights were not respected,” he said.

Actually, the tragedy of residential schools was children torn from the their parents, and physically and sexually abused — ironically, by those claiming to be acting on behalf of society by instilling solid Christian values in these children.

That Trost would spew such irresponsible ignorance while representing a province that saw some of the worst atrocities of the residential school era (see: the Gordon reserve residential school sexual abuse convictions) suggests it’s more than sex education that needs to be on the curriculum.

Is it any wonder past Conservative leader Stephen Harper (whose apology and condemnation of residential schools was one of his best moments as prime minister) worked so hard to keep Trost under wraps?

While Trost has wrapped his campaign around the Reform Act promoted by fellow Conservative candidate Michael Chong, which affords MPs greater representative say, what his campaign clearly promotes is more influence only for those who share his personal religious and socially conservative views at the expense of those who don’t.

This is far more offensive than Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch’s “Canadian values” test, which — ironically — Trost opposes because he hopes some new Canadians share his intolerant views toward gays and others.

And Trost is wrapping this around the warped notion that it’s he and others who share his views who are the victims.

This candidacy is simply pathetic.