February 1999

Senator targets 'theo-conservatives'

Tory Senator Ron Ghitter, Q.C., believes that religious conservatives "pose the greatest threat to the maintenance and advancement of human rights in our nation." In Ghitter's estimation, "theo-conservatives" are more dangerous to Canadian society than "skinheads, the Aryan Nation and white supremacists."

Senator Ghitter's recent address entitled, "Theo-conservatism: A Threat to Human Rights," delivered at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., amounts to a declaration of war against conservative Christians.

As a thoroughgoing theo-conservative, I thank Senator Ghitter for his candid exposition of the contempt in which we are held by the liberal-humanist left. His diatribe serves as a clangorous wake-up call for religious conservatives who believe they can sit passively on the sidelines. I have long held that persecution of Christians is coming in Canada.

Ron Ghitter obviously despises Christian morality, and larded his address with derogatory references to "the moral majority," "scolding, moralizing conservatism," "evangelicals," and "puritanism." Among those he identified as exemplars of this evil and pernicious theo-conservatism are Preston Manning, Ted Byfield, the Christian Heritage Party, and REAL Women - people I am happy to identify with.

Senator Ghitter accuses us of being "inherently pessimistic" and advocates of "a return to older, conservative themes of cultural decline, moralism and the need for greater social control - a strained version of a neo-religious revival." He maintains that our "agenda" has "less to do with economics, national unity, or health care," and more to do with "morals, infidelity, honesty, abortion, family cohesion and homosexual legitimacy,"and that our remedies "strike at the very foundations of human rights in Canada."

Senator Ron has certainly done his homework. The interesting point is that he apparently regards things like infidelity, abortion, and homosexuality in a positive light, but honesty, morals, and family cohesion as qualities that need to be trodden underfoot, whereas theo-conservatives take a diametrically opposite view, as did the overwhelming majority in our society until recently.

We theo-conservatives are a shifty and devious lot, according to Senator Ron, affirming as we do the principles of "free speech, the family," and, as he puts it, our "specially crafted interpretations of the Bible." That would, by the way, be the interpretation "specially crafted" by the Church for nearly 20 centuries until our present distempered era.

According to Senator Ron, we "mould a story based on negatives, on fear, the unknown and ignorance," and couch our rhetoric "in digestible homespun terms in order to gain public acceptance." Within our "rigid absolutism," he asserts, "can be found the traditional cultivating grounds for intolerance and prejudice."

And, of course, no up-to-date rhetorical bashing of Christian traditionalists would be complete without some obligatory guilt-by-association innuendo, and Senator Ron doesn't disappoint, referring to theo-conservatives who, allegedly, "can be found quietly nodding their heads in agreement when abortion clinics are bombed, or gays are assaulted and killed as evidenced in the Sheppard tragedy."

There is plenty more calumnious vitriol in Senator Ghitter's attack, but you get the idea. He shows once again that the one social category that can be defamed, slandered, and insulted with impunity in today's liberal-humanist dominated polity is religious conservatives, especially Christians.

The really scary thing is that I think Ron Ghitter sincerely thinks that we are evil and dangerous because we affirm traditional moral principles that were the mainstream consensus a few decades ago. The words of Isaiah the prophet come to mind: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness!"

This agenda is unacceptable to religious conservatives, who have been forced to respond to the secularist threat by mobilizing politically. Fed up with being ridiculed, insulted, and bullied by supercilious liberals like Ron Ghitter, we aim to prevent the civilization it took Christians two millennia of blood, sweat, and tears to build from being mortally sacrificed on the altar of multi-culturalism, tolerance without limits, sexual libertinism, "human rights," and sundry other politically correct hobby-horses.

This culture war is between those who believe that Canada's traditional moral-religious heritage must be salvaged, and liberal-humanist cultural elites bent on turning this country into a radically secular, multicultural, anti-religious, pan-sexualist dystopia. There is no common ground. Which side are you on?