And the Israeli government itself has shrewdly branded itself as “an international gay vacation destination” - a successful marketing ploy that has given fits to anti-Israeli activists. Supporters of Israel, in particular, often appeal to liberal critics by emphasizing the Jewish state’s especially tolerant attitude toward gays, as compared to the virulent homophobia prevalent in Palestinian and other Arab cultures. “And in some cases, this has caused conservatives to revisit their views on homosexuality back at home.” In some cases, this has caused conservatives to revisit their views on homosexuality back at home “Recent years have brought into sharp relief the Western conception of human rights and the very different conception of human rights in other countries,” says Jonathan Tobin, the online editor for Commentary, a deeply conservative, strongly pro-Israel American magazine that, over the last year, also has featured some writers who’ve marked out a progressive path on gay rights. In 2012, when Mitt Romney fired a worker after Republicans were complaining that he was gay, there were all sorts of jokes about how if Harper had to fire every gay aide he had, half his workforce would be gone.” “It went up to the top: There was a group of gay men who would arrive to set up before the Prime Minister’s events - the ‘beauty brigade,’ I’d call them. “In the Conservative party, gay staffers were especially prominent, because often it’s the young men, the ones without kids, who tend to work the longest hours that demands,” Mr. “Then, suddenly, you’re in Ottawa, and gay people are everywhere - and so your attitude changes.” “A lot of these people who were elected as rookie MPs, they came from areas of the country where they might have never met a gay person, or very few,” he says. Mitchel Raphael, who formerly edited Toronto-based gay magazine fab and reported on the Parliament Hill social circuit for Maclean’s, says that this sort of shift in attitude was apparent all over the federal Conservative party during their first few years in government. Article content James Park for Postmedia News This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The seeds of the Harper government’s current gay-supportive policy, he argues, were planted in 1994, after the failure of Ontario’s Bill 167, which would have granted some of the rights associated with marriage to same-sex couples. Once that lost, he immediately stated he considered the matter to be settled.”īut Jaime Watt, a political strategist who helped Mike Harris’ Ontario Progressive Conservatives win two provincial elections, believes there is more to the shift than mere political utilitarianism. Harper put a designed-to-fail motion to reopen the issue to Parliament. Harper knew he’d have to use the notwithstanding clause to reverse equal marriage, which Canadians would oppose…. “But by the time Stephen Harper became Prime Minister in 2006, the legal context and popular opinion had changed tremendously - Mr. “When we started the equal marriage challenges in the courts in 2001, public opinion was slightly against us,” he says.
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