Remember when that bogus coalition tried to smack down Beverley McLachlan for her alleged role in getting Henry Morgentaler his Order of Canada? Well, it looks like the religious right is back playing that game again. The subject du jour is the Albertan “parental rights” legislation, which I’ve covered before, as have many others, and which would – the premier and at least one minister have argued – let religious parents take teachers before the Human Rights Commission for discussing evolution or sexual orientation in the classroom.

Yesterday there was a new development when a self-described “coalition of five family organizations” issued a press release through CNW, declaring their support for the legislation, which is still being debated. According to the press relesae, “family is the fundamental unit of society and parents have the right to choose the kind of education that shall be given their children.” I wonder whether that includes the parents of this girl in Winnipeg.

Anyway, like in the McLachlan incident, there is some funny footwork going on here. (Also some fuckery over at Equipping Christians’ blog, by the way, where Tim Bloedow says the coalition is “mostly Albertan conservative organizations,” when in fact they’re national organizations and a provincial chapter.)

For one thing, as in the McLachlan affair precisely in fact, REAL Women is actually listed twice: once as REAL Women of Canada, and again as REAL Women of Canada Alberta Chapter. Now unless those two organizations have oddly divergent policy positions, which I find unlikely, there are actually only four organizations here.

As for the others, well, United Families of Canada is listed, and I’m not even sure they exist anymore. Their website doesn’t seem to, anyways. The phone number listed for “Jill Cahoon, President,” is actually registered to David Cahoon, who is presumably her husband, which presumably means that the organization is fallen on hard times and this is a home telephone number.

That’s not conclusive, mind you – REAL Women of Alberta President Corry Morcos’s number is registered to Fawzy Morcos, again presumably her husband. Ditto with the number of Michele Dow of United Mothers and Fathers, though in that case, at least, it seems that she actually owns her own phone.

REAL Women and the Catholic League, of course, have their own phone numbers. And offices. Which is good for them. And United Mothers has a website, at any rate. As for the others, if I were them, I’d be grateful right now about the fact, as you so frequently and paranoidly assert, that the mainstream media “ignores” you. After all, you wouldn’t want reporters deluging your house with phone calls this evening, would you?

The Albertan controversy, which has been discussed previously on this site as well as at other blogs, is being covered regularly by Big City Lib, who writes that the Stelmach government now seems open to looking at some amendments to address concerns from teachers over chilling effects in science classrooms:

You know, one thing politicians know how to do better than anyone is count votes. The Stelmach government looked around and realized that the over-haul of their Human Rights Act would involve balancing the demands of the Gay and SoCon communities. If Speechies got stiffed (and they did), that’s because the Stelmach government realized there weren’t enough of them to be worth the fuss.

Another perspective, critical of the implications of Bill 44, has also been offered in the Calgary Herald by pundit Rob Breakenridge. Views from the other side have been offered by blogs such as No Apologies, which recently accused a Religious Right Alert author of being “McCarthyite.”

Meanwhile, over in Québec, religious right forces are gathering in opposition to
the new Ethics and Religious Culture which is intended to replace existing religious instruction on morality with a new comparative look at various world faiths’ approaches to moral questions. The course has been controversial among many parts of society, not just the religious right, but it is from religious sources that a pair of legal challenges have recently originated.

Several organizations have emerged in support of the legal cases. One, naturally, is the Catholic Civil Rights League, which recently released a press release on the matter here, in which it defends “the right of parents to direct the education of their children, and in particular to choose the religious education of their children” (thanks to No Apologies for the link).

Another supportive organization is the Canadian Constitution Foundation, currently led by former Reform candidate John Carpay. In a Globe and Mail op-ed, he argues that the course is superficial, “inherently anti-religious,” and a case of “state-imposed… relativism.” As RevDave of Terrible Depths observed, Carpay’s foundation is funded by the Donner Foundation and Aurea Foundation, and draws personnel from Civitas, the Physicians for Life, the Montreal Economic Institute, and the Fraser Institute.

Religious Right Alert will continue to follow developments in both these disputes.

If “religion” was going to be defined in the broad Gary Goodyear-ian sense, then it wasn’t hard to imagine what sort of trouble could result from this legislation: sexists objecting to women’s equality, atheist parents with kids in Catholic schools, or just “legal and administrative chaos.” In retrospect it’s not surprising that the government decided to cut its losses and get out of the “evolution is religion” game before things got out of control.

Even if evolution was out of the picture, though, “parental rights” – and by implication family authority – is near and dear to the religious right, so it wasn’t surprising to see a swarm of enthusiastic endorsements from that sector. The Canada Family Action Coalition is now in the game, for example. Equipping Christians has also leaped to the government’s defence.

There is, however, a deep irony here. The parental rights law is being introduced via the Human Rights Act, so presumably it would be enforced – if necessary – by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The Chumir Foundation, to its credit, has opposed the amendment for this reason. However, the Christian right is going to run smack into a wall on this issue.

The Human Rights Commissions first attracted the ire of the religious right on gay rights issues, and many organizations have more recently hitched their wagons to Ezra Levant’s public relations crusade against the Commissions. With the fallout from Shakedown, it actually looked like the anti-HRC battle was beginning to make some gains. The Commissions haven’t been totally discredited yet, but they’re probably closer than ever before. And now the religious right might have to defend the Commissions, after all!

Just this morning, Catholic right-writer Raymond de Souza was expounding on the “abuses” of the Commissions in the National Post. He also points the way to a factless but possibly effective way out of this problem for the religious right: he advances the rather paranoid notion that on the basis of “parental rights” the Alberta Human Rights Commission might be pushed by gay activists or other evil-doers into “radicalizing the curriculum.”

Cross-posted at Birchbark Bible.

Voice of the Martyrs Canada weblog expresses disappointment at Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett toes the party line when it comes to changes he proposed to powers of Alberta Human Rights to adjudicate cases of free speech Commission.

A Canadian will be taking over the top spot for one of the best known International religious aid agencies in the world. Calgarian Kevin Jenkins will become president and CEO of World Vision which operates in 96 countries. World Vision has a staff of 40 thousand people around the world and a budget of 2.6 billion dollars a year.

How do churches cope with flu outbreaks and potential pandemics? Carefully and the same as the rest of us. Canadian Mennonites have an up to date resource and practical website for congregations, parishes and church staff from across Canada. There has also been a Canadian website and discussion forum put up by and Canadian doctor and to educate and inform churches how to be intentional.

A few days ago Pope Benedict XVI apologized to Canada’s First Nations people for the appaulling treatment they were subject to at residental schools. From the late 1800′s until the 1970′s, 150 thousand ofCanada’s indigenous children were stripped from their communities and sent to one of the 132 church run schools across the country. Better late than never from the Vatican, other churches have apologized, worked toward restitution and the federal government issued a formal apology a year ago.
The Assembly of First Nations response. Vatican Radio

We haven’t advertised or pushed religious right alert and it’s enouraging to read posts like this from Canuck Attitude:

One of the great gems I see arriving on the Canadian Blogging scene is Religious Right Alert. A well thought out consortium of intelligent people who really know what they are talking about, what a concept. This is a site I really want to see fly.

And from Dammit Janet

Religious Right Alert. It seems to be newish, this-monthish…I hope they keep up the good work.

Thanks, I hope we do to. This are about using the vast knowledge and original content Canadian bloggers post and this site welcomes your voice, your tips and your input.

Religious Right Alert and Slap Upside the Head have in the past couple weeks been covering some surprisingly petty social conservative policies of Ed Stelmach’s government, like the official statement that the government is not going to recognize public-sector employees’ same-sex spouses as legally married because it believes gay people shouldn’t have that right. Now, however, it’s getting even more bizarre. And I thought creationism was just something that Americans had to worry about.

Years behind everyone else, the provincial government is only now getting around to passing an amendment to the Human Rights Act to protect sexual orientation from discrimination. Culture minister Lindsay Blackett offered the odd explanation that the move is being done to promote tourism and that much of the Conservative caucus was opposed to the move altogether. (Despite the fact that according to the Supreme Court the province has no choice in the matter anyways.) So, a compromise was reached. A particularly Orwellian one.

You see, in the midst of the bill that would grant equality to gay people is a clause that would require schools to give parents advance notice, and an opportunity to pull their kids out of the classroom, if any of the following topics will be discussed (see text of Bill 44 here):

1. Religion
2. Sexuality
3. Sexual Orientation

It should go without saying that if your sexual orientation is something that can’t be discriminated against, it doesn’t make sense to say that parents are going to be allowed to yank their kids from a school classroom where the issue is just being discussed. Using a human rights bill to chill classroom discussion of sexual orientation is pretty Orwellian, and pretty terrible.

In the title of this post, I mentioned creationism. I did that deliberately. You might think that this list of parental rights is irrelevant – science is still science, after all, and not religion. The Albertan government, however, does not agree. Blackett in fact has specifically stated that, at least under his interpretation of the law, “parents would have the right to opt out of evolution classes.”

Are there connections between the religious right and the Stelmach government in Alberta?