Harper Does it Again to the Gays

The Divers/Cité festival will not be getting it’s $155,000 handout. The political decision came after bureaucrats in Ottawa had approved the grant right down to the last cent.

Every year the three-day diversity festival brings in about 55,000 visitors to Montreal, many of them from out-of-town who are only too happy to leave behind $10 million in return for a good time. The feds pick up at least half a million bucks in GST alone. Not bad for a $155,000 investment.

Harper has voted against extending legal rights of gays and lesbians, voted against same-sex marriages, and has avoided attending every major gay and lesbian parade ever organized in Canada.

Two years ago Harper hid in a mine up North avoiding a big international AIDS conference in Toronto where he would have been sure to run into a lot of homosexual men. He is still the only leader of a host country not to attend the annual conference.

The trouble began back in June when Tourism minister Diane Ablonczy handed out $400,000 to a big Toronto gay and lesbian parade, without telling Harper or his office about it.

That was a capital mistake. She knew how Harper feels about gay parades. Ablonczy was acting in her capacity as the minister responsible for handing out money for the big festivals, parades, rodeos and major shows – events that attract international tourists and bring in lots of foreign money.

But when Toronto newspapers carried photos of the Toronto Gay and Lesbian Parade – especially shots of over-weight, middle-aged men prancing about bare-backed in leather – the Christian Right, which is so important to Harper’s re-election, went up the wall.

They fell upon Harper with a ferocity that only the righteous can possess.

Ablonczy’s responsibility for doling out money to major tourism events was taken away from her immediately. It was given to her colleague Industry Minister Tony Clement who understands well what the Christian Right and Harper expect of him. Ablonczy was left as a tourism minister without a major tourism shows budget.

Conservative backbench MP Brad Tost of Saskatoon, a big fan of Coalition Action for Life, bragged on the organization’s www.lifesitenews.com that he had helped bring down Ablonczy.

Three weeks later when the Divers/Cité grant request came up on Clement’s desk for his signature, he knew exactly what to do.

The department cobbled together an excuse for killing the Montreal grant. Officials said they had run out of money for Quebec in their $50 million budget.

That hardly convinced anyone, certainly not after Harper had handed out a $1.9 million federal grant to his beloved Calgary Stampede, an event, of course, where men wear the “right” kind of leather.

The cancellation of the Divers/Cité grant won’t stop the Montreal festival. The federal money was only about seven percent of the festival’s budget. The loss will be made up easily by donations from people who do not share Harper’s views.

It’s one thing for Harper to vote against legal rights for gays and lesbians, or to oppose same-sex marriages until the Supreme Court twists his arm.

But to renege on a legitimate government grant, that has been already approved, because it’s going to people who are different, . . . well, it tells us that for Harper, when it comes to gays, ideology trumps dollars.