Quebec’s anti-‘homophobia’ plan is a ‘declaration of war’: McGill professor
‘Aims at… conversion of… the psychological, moral and sexual infrastructure of a generation’
When Parliament passed Bill C-38, legalizing same-sex ‘marriage’ (June 7, 2005), Dr. Douglas Farrow wrote that it is the duty of all Canadians to refuse to recognize this legislation, which is not legal under Canada’s Constitution. Now that Quebec has adopted a policy to eliminate the right to voice opposition to normalization of homosexuality, he calls it a ‘declaration of war’ on pro-moral Canadians. His original article is attached after this news report.
By Patrick B. Craine
MONTREAL, Quebec, February 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com)—A professor at McGill University has published a strong condemnation of the Quebec government’s “policy against homophobia,” which was released in December. Warning that this policy represents a “declaration of war” against any who oppose the homosexualist agenda, Dr. Douglas Farrow, Professor of Christian Thought, calls on his fellow citizens to take a stand against it.
When the Quebec Ministry of Justice released the policy before Christmas, it was held up as the first of its kind from a North American jurisdiction. The Ministry asserted that, with homosexuality having achieved full normalization in Quebec law, the present policy aims to normalize homosexuality on the social level.
Dr. Farrow’s article, entitled “The Government of Québec Declares War: on a ‘homophobic’ and ‘heterosexist’ populace,” was published on the Catholic Civil Rights League website.
The Quebec policy, writes Dr. Farrow, “diagrams a full-scale assault, to be coordinated by an inter-departmental committee, against ‘homophobic attitudes and behaviour patterns’ and ‘sets out the government’s goal of removing all the obstacles’ to full recognition of LGBT interests and modes of life.”
“What is thus promulgated is no ordinary policy document,” he continues, “for it aims at the conversion, not merely of this or that piece of public infrastructure, but of the psychological and moral and sexual infrastructure of a generation.”
He emphasizes that the initiative represents an unprecedented interference of government into private affairs, and that it thus threatens basic freedoms. ”Herewith the Ministry of Justice moves boldly and decisively into territory once reserved for the voluntary organs of civil society,” he explains. ”Not only is homophobia to be eradicated ‘at all levels of society,’ it is to be eradicated as a matter of government policy and by means of government action.”
The policy is “an official endorsement of—indeed, the assumption of full responsibility for—the activist agenda of so-called LGBT groups,” he says. ”As such, it is also a declaration of war by the Charest government on all groups and citizens who oppose that agenda.”
“Can the government win such a war?” he asks. ”Perhaps not. But a government so lacking in constitutional modesty, in moral judgment, and in political sense as to wage it, is a government that can and will wreak havoc in Quebec society.”
Farrow undercuts the ideological assumptions driving the government’s plan, dissecting, for example, a statement on it from Premier Jean Charest. ”Our society has everything to gain from accepting sexual diversity and fighting intolerance,” Charest proclaimed.
While such a claim is commonly accepted at face value, Farrow raises some of the numerous questions underlying Charest’s assertion. ”Refusing to accept sexual diversity as a public desideratum may indeed be a form of intolerance, but is it a bad form of intolerance or a good form?” he asks, for example.
The document focuses on combating “homophobia,” but Farrow says that “we cannot get the measure of this document” without a grasp of what he says the government sees as homophobia’s ‘twin evil’:
