• The government of Alberta is refusing to permit employees to list their same-sex spouses as, well, spouses – they must be registered in the more limited category of “benefit partner.” Treasury Board president Lloyd Snelgrove says his government has “no intention of changing the definition of spouse to include people in same-sex marriages.” (h/t Slap Upside the Head)
  

• Pundit Michael Coren has attracted justifiable attacks from the likes of Dammit Janet! and the Galloping Beaver for a recent column suggesting that women should not be permitted to enlist in the army – they’re too small, too weak, and in general should be “laughing with college friends rather than fighting theocratic madmen.” Not finished with that, he goes on to add that women couldn’t possibly fend off the “Taliban tribesmen” and the “thrust of their long knives.”

• Brampton religious groups are tentatively declaring victory in a campaign to overturn proposed new bylaws that might, they say, threaten the tax-exempt status of large churches

In the (Think) Tanks

• The Focus on the Family-funded Institute of Marriage and Family Canada’s weekly family issues report, prepared by in-house researcher and former Conservative Party official Derek Miedema, says that the growing number of senior citizens will overwhelm Canada’s healthcare and social safety nets unless we shift more responsibility for their welfare away from government and onto their families. (Presumably this is more “sustainable” because it would involve more unpaid work by relatives, especially women.

• Equipping Christians for the Public Square will be holding an Ignite Our Culture convention at Trinity Western University in Vancouver on May 8-9. The theme, and subject of the keynote by anti-Muslim “scholar” Sam Solomon, will be: “A Veiled Threat? Islam in the West: Polygamy and Jihad.” ECP will also soon be holding several fundraising dinners in Alberta, featuring Ezra Levant.

• The Manning Centre for Building Democracy has created a “municipal campaign school” for Saskatchewan electoral candidates. Looks like it’s being run by Richard Ciano, the Conservative Party official previously implicated in previous attempts to boost right-wing voices in student politics

We’re looking for a name for this feature of links and we’re stuck.
A name themed around rocks, stones…any ideas?

• Dave Quist of the Focus on the Family Canada-funded think tank the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, discussed here and by Terrible Depths, recently criticized online dating sites for harming women, explaining that orgasms make women fall in love and therefore must take care not to have them with the wrong men.

• Ottawa journalist Brian Lilley writes in the National Post and its online religion blog, Holy Post, that Georgetown University has lost its “authentically Catholic” status by first granting an honorary degree to Barack Obama, and then, in preparing a room for his address last week, “covered up the name of Jesus” with flags and other finery.

• The slow but steady Anglican schism over gay and women’s rights has widened a little further as conservative-leaning churches in the Global Anglican Future Conference recognized a new “province” which would include dissenting churches in North America. There’s been only a weak reaction so far from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

BD here: We’re looking for a name for the daily roundup. Something to do with turning over rocks, or stones and we have writers block. Any ideas?

McDonald explores the connections between the Christian right, a growing array of think tanks and advocacy organizations in Ottawa, and – somewhat disturbingly – the Reform elements now present in the Conservative Party of Canada.

Her analysis delves specifically into the religious background of Stephen Harper, who, despite years as our Prime Minister, remains something of an enigma on the personal level. Harper is a member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance church, having seemingly moved into evangelicalism through the influence of Preston Manning and other colleagues in the Reform Party. In 2003, he suggested at Civitas that the road to power lay through the cultivation of his friends in the religious right, whom he labelled the “theo-cons” – religiously motivated social conservatives.

McDonald hits many of the major highlights, including Charles McVety, the Manning Centre, Focus on the Family’s Institute for Marriage and Family Canada, the Canada Family Action Coalition, and the National House of Prayer. She also touches briefly on the role of Christian zionism and alliances between the Christian and Jewish right – such as McVety’s decision to have Orthodox Jew and B’nai Brith veteran Joseph Ben-Ami head up the Institute for Canadian Values.

At this point the greatest fault in McDonald’s account is really no fault of hers: the work is becoming seriously dated. A lot has happened in the last three years. However, her article still remains, in my mind, the best starting point for beginning an exploration of the Canadian religious right.

The Religious Right, Stephen Harper and The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada

Gary Goodyear’s suggestion that evolution was a theological issue of faith got several bloggers, including myself, interested in the growing influence of the religious right in Canadian politics. At the time of the comments, bloggers hit the roof. The issue died down very quickly, though – now there are just a bunch of leftists, atheists and agnostics quietly simmering and waiting for some other Conservative MP to make a misguided remark so that they can blow up again.

In the meantime, therefore, I thought I’d stir the pot again – and simultaneously extend my Following the Money series in new directions. The occasion for these remarks are a pair of op-eds which appeared in major newspapers last week, each written by Andrea Mrozek of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada: “Marriage Benefits Us All” in the National Post (since syndicated throughout the Asper network, e.g. in the Windsor Star and the Calgary Herald). Incidentally, Mrozek also writes at the conservative group blog ProWomanProLife, which, despite the name, doesn’t always seem overly pro-woman. But whatever. Both of these articles argue in favour of the traditional family – one against divorce, the other against gay marriage.

Mrozek works for the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an Ottawa-based think tank, and in fairness, her pieces are a far cry from the work that the IMFC used to do. That’s because, a year and a half ago, the organization officially stopped its lobbying program on gay marriage. Director David Quist, at the time, suggested that there were few gay marriages going on and that the issue was done and dead, so his little advocacy group was moving on to other issues. The fact that polygamy is now in the Canadian courts, thanks to the fundamentalist Mormons out in B.C., presumably gave them the window they wanted to jump back into the fray.

So, who is the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, anyways? The connections it holds are intriguing and disturbing: American family groups, Canadian right-wing think tanks, and – wait for it – the Conservative Party of Canada, right up to the level of Stephen Harper:

The IMFC is the offspring of the American-controlled pro-family, anti-gay marriage lobby group, Focus on the Family, until recently controlled by evangelical power figure James Dobson. It was founded in 2006 with an agenda that could basically summed up as “everything the religious right cares about”: family laws, age of consent laws (those went up under the Conservatives, incidentally), divorce, euthanasia, taxes, and palliative care. Its founders gave some interviews to the sympathetic evangelical periodical Christian Week at the time, and the weekly reported that these positions would be approached “all from a Christian perspective.” Interestingly, the IMFC itself is no longer in any hurry to promote its Christian background; its official introductory pamphlet says merely that it exists to take “a growing body of scientific research” and turn it into “practical ideas.”

In 2006, the Edmonton Journal covered the creation of the new group and wrote that “their mobilization was not ignited by Harper.” Oh, really? Well, maybe not directly. But let’s move through the list of employees. The first is executive director Dave Quist. For six years, Quist was the executive assistant to Alliance and then Conservative MP and former Baptist pastor Reid Elly. He ran for the Conservatives in 2004, lost, and then spent a year working as Stephen Harper’s director of operations. There’s about a five-month gap between the time he left Harper’s office and the time that the new think tank was announced in the media. Quite a number of his old Conservative colleagues were in attendance at the grand opening, including Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney.

Mrozek, the author of the recent newspaper op-eds, is listed as the Manager of Research and Communications. Her background is in journalism, but her recent work was at the right-wing Western Standard (her bio on IMFC generalizes to only “an independent news magazine in Calgary,” just to make sure people don’t make that connection), and at the even more right-wing Fraser Institute in B.C.

The researchers are a mixed bag of right-wing evangelicals. Peter Jon Mitchell is actually imported from the parent Focus on the Family organization in the U.S. – he used to work at their Institute in Colorado. Kelly Dean Schwartz is a psychologist in Calgary. Frank Jones is a retired StatsCan number cruncher who is also listed at another religious right think tank, the Christian Commitment Research Institute.

Derek Miedema, the last researcher, used to work for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, with its own possible ties to the Harper government. His bio on the Institute webpage says merely that that was preceded by a stint as a legislative assistant for an unnamed MP. I instantly suspected Conservative, and my suspicions were confirmed by a jog over to the website of Miedema’s alma mater, the religious school Redeemer University College, which is less circumspect. Miedema was the legislative assistant for Mr. David Sweet, the Conservative MP for Ancaster-Dundas. Sweet, not incidentally, is the former CEO of Promise Keepers Canada, in which function he told a journalist in 2001 that men were “natural influencers” and women were “natural followers” (his explanation for the notably unbiblical claim that “Jesus called men only”).

Interestingly, both Miedema and Jones have links to another evangelical group, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. That group has its own ties to the Conservative government – and one of their former anti-gay marriage lobbyists in Ottawa recently got appointed to the Immigration and Refugee Board. Jones served on the Fellowship’s Advisory Council on Research, and Miedema was a researcher for them.

Sunday March 29, 2009
Terrible Depths Used by permission

Have you blogged about The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada? Drop us a line and let us know if we can use and link your post in full or in part.

Blogs:
Pulpit and Politics: Harper promotes religious rightists
Douglas Todd, The Search: Evangelicals promoted to top jobs by Harper
Chyco: The Evangelicalization of The Conservative Party
Bene Diction Blogs On: 2008 Ottawa Focus on the Family fellow rebuked by American Anthropological Association
Slap Upside the Head: 2008. Anti-Gay Lobbyists warn Canada not to sign UN Initiative

Frank Stirk ChristianWeek, February 3, 2006. Focus on the Family Opens Ottawa think-tank
Richard Foot The Edmonton Journal, Febrary 18, 2006. Christians eager to flex political muscle
Gudrun Schultz Lifesite, February 2006 Focus on the Family Opens Institute of Marriage and Family Ottawa