Social conservatives under siege

The Ontario election campaign dug further into the mud and grime over the weekend — or at least the battle between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives did. On Saturday, PC leader Doug Ford dismissed Tanya Granic Allen as his party’s candidate in Mississauga Centre, ostensibly over comments she made a few years ago about sex education and same-sex marriage in Croatia (whence her father immigrated to Canada). On Sunday it all went full Godwin, with the Liberals accusing Ford of attracting support from neo-Nazis, including a prominent recruiter to the cause based in Montreal.

A Liberal press release pointed recipients to a podcast called This Hour Has 88 Minutes (88 being neo-Nazi code for “heil Hitler.”) “I’m converted to Ford Nation now,” one participant declared. “I swear we need to hit blue-collar people where they are. They don’t want to see Muslims in their communities.”

Ford repudiated the neo-Nazis’ beliefs and rejected their support and observed, correctly, that no neo-Nazi who understood the multiethnic demographics of Ford Nation would be likely to endorse him. “We welcome people from all backgrounds, religion, and income levels,” he tweeted.

Still, we’re supposed to believe this is Ford’s fault. “For months the Conservative Party and Doug Ford have tolerated intolerance. The endorsement of Canada’s most notorious neo-Nazi is a predictable consequence of their actions,” Li Koo, the Liberals’ candidate in Toronto-Danforth, said in the press release.

The intolerance the Tories supposedly tolerated, as the Liberals pitch it, was Granic Allen’s — specifically “against the LGBT, Muslim and Jewish communities.” She may well have said more and worse things than we know of. But what’s on the record right now mostly boils down to an unusually blunt expression of standard-issue social conservatism.

Her intolerant views against the LGBT community are that she opposes same-sex marriage. (Liberals also often cast opposition to the sex-ed curriculum as thinly disguised homophobia.) Muslims: she dislikes the burka. Jews: “If the Jews were still being killed (as opposed to fetuses), there would be a debate (on abortion) in this country.”

She is certainly guilty of glibly addressing serious and divisive issues. She has compared burka-clad women to “ninjas.” The term “abortion holocaust” should never pass an aspiring politician’s lips even if she thinks there’s an abortion holocaust. But there are a lot of Ontarians who share some or all of her beliefs, including many non-white Ontarians, who would not appreciate being compared to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Her unabashedness was precisely what got so-cons so excited about her. And yet despite his comfortable lead in the polls, Ford seems to be giving them the shaft.

“Another betrayal of social conservatives — just like Patrick Brown,” Granic Allen said in a statement released Monday.

“If Doug Ford has declared war on social conservatives we’re ready to do battle,” Campaign Life Coalition vice-president Jeff Gunnarson told Life Site News. “We have 10,000 paid up troops. They are trained, they are eager and they will strike when given the word.”

Just what the troops would get up to is unclear. Gunnarson isn’t writing off Ford’s Tories just yet. “We have heard that Doug is going to make some announcements about the issues that we’re concerned about, that Tanya was certainly concerned about,” says Gunnarson — he mentions sex ed and conscience rights for doctors. “And we’re waiting to see if he’ll say anything on free speech, in terms of bubble zones (around abortion clinics).”

In her statement, Granic Allen said Ford would need to recommit to repealing the sex-ed curriculum, and address both Bill 89 (which Life Site News describes as empowering the government “to seize children from families that oppose the LGBTQI and gender ideology agenda”) and Bill 77 (which social conservatives argue limits treatment options for gender-dysphoric children).

Ford won’t want to do any of that, obviously. He defenestrated Granic Allen because he wants to talk about this stuff less, not more. And if he wins, he’s going to want even less to keep any compensatory promises he now makes. Sex-ed looks relatively easy on the surface — just consult with parents, make a few tweaks here and there — but many of its opponents would oppose its replacement just as virulently because they oppose sex ed, period. Then suddenly it’s “Doug Ford’s sex ed curriculum.”

What’s clear enough is that Granic Allen should never have been allowed to run for leader and should never have been greenlit to run in Mississauga. What’s ever less clear is whether social conservatives have any future in this party — or under any other big blue Canadian tent, for that matter. On Sunday in Edmonton, United Conservative Party grandees were reduced to begging grassroots members not to vote for a policy that would have schools notify parents if their kids joined a gaystraight alliance club.

“This is about outing gay kids,” former MLA Ric McIver said to jeers. “This will really severely hurt our chances at winning.”

If members expressing their views hurts a party’s chance of winning, maybe everyone would be better off with a divorce.