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Press Release

November 1, 2000

Anti-Gay Bigots Run as Candidates for Canadian Alliance, Egale Reveals

Candidates with a history of anti-gay remarks and policy positions are running for the Canadian Alliance, revealed EGALE today. EGALE is a national organization which advances equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people in Canada.

“It’s clear that the extremist anti-gay right-wing in Canada has identified the Canadian Alliance as the perfect vehicle for promoting their intolerant views in Ottawa - and the Canadian Alliance is welcoming them with open arms”, said John Fisher, Executive Director of EGALE.

Among the anti-gay candidates running for the Canadian Alliance are:

• Don Pennell, Canadian Alliance candidate for Burlington, ON
  
  Mr. Pennell was founder of the “Family Coalition Party” and ran for election in Ontario in 1987. “Homosexuality is against God’s law”, Pennell told the Toronto Star at the time. The symbol of the Family Coalition Party - an olive branch - is taken from the biblical quote:
  ‘Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thy house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.’
  
  
• Ray Pennings, Canadian Alliance candidate for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot, ON
  
  Mr. Pennings ran for the Christian Heritage Party and wrote to the Hamilton Spectator in 1994, confirming his belief that “a homosexual lifestyle is unnatural and immoral”
  
  
• Peter Stock, Canadian Alliance candidate for Simcoe North, ON
  
  Until the election, Peter Stock was National Affairs Director for the Canadian Family Action Coalition, a group which promotes a rigid definition of “family” consisting of only heterosexual married couples and their children.
  
  Of all other family structures outside the heterosexual married model, Stock stated to a Parliamentary Committee on March 2, 2000 that “there is no discernible public good that these relationships contribute to society.” Peter Stock says that single parents, common-law heterosexual couples same-sex couples are “an absolute disaster for children and should not be supported in public policy or endorsed or encouraged.” In fact, Stock has gone even further, when testifying before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, stating that “he would roll back benefits and obligations with respect to the coupleship of those individuals.”
  
  Stock’s Website trumpets the fact that Stockwell Day supported the use of the “notwithstanding clause” to see ‘sexual orientation’ excluded from Alberta’s human rights legislation, supported the use of the notwithstanding clause in an Alberta Act to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, and “worked to end taxpayer funding of medically unnecessary abortions”.
  
  

Fisher pointed out that other Canadian Alliance candidates and MPs have denounced gays and lesbians as “deviant”, “destructive to family life”, “unnatural’, “immoral”, a “repudiation of nature” and “repulsive”. “Bigotry is an unfortunate fact of life, and these Canadian Alliance candidates are entitled to promote their intolerant views”, added Fisher. “But God help us all if they ever find themselves running the country.”

For further information:
John Fisher, Executive Director, 1-888-204-7777

Egale Canada ©2010

Égale Canada est résolue à promouvoir l’égalité et la justice pour les personnes lesbiennes, gaies, bisexuelles et trans-identifiées, ainsi que leur famille, à travers le Canada.