News of the Restless

If you don’t think the above is an accurate summation of Tanya Granic Allen — the far-right embarrassment recently turfed from the Ontario PC party for being too obviously fascist — then you really need to read her white whine in the oh-so-white-and-whiny National Pest. Seems that she’s finally decided to pipe up in her own defence. But if she were really serious about defending herself, the better thing to do might be to pipe the hell down, because this is just hysterical:

I am a daughter of immigrants: my mother is from Malta, my father is from Croatia. Croatia was ruled by the Yugoslav Communists for generations, people of all faiths (Croatia has a massive Catholic majority) were persecuted. As in all Marxist regimes, it was official policy to attack the traditional family and the bond between parents and children.

This is, as you may have guessed, just the first of Tanya’s many lies. In Yugoslavia, religion of any kind was not “persecuted”, and the “traditional family” was NOT “attacked”, as a matter of official policy or otherwise. My mom’s family came from the part that is now once again called Serbia, and their religion — Protestantism — was the reason they fled Germany over 200 years ago to land in the Yugoslav provinces of what was then Hungary. At that time the part of Germany that they came from was officially Catholic, and it was either convert, or leave. My mom’s ancestors left for the Balkans, where all kinds of religions and ethnicities mixed and mingled and tolerated one another freely, because a fragile snowflake of a Catholic princeling couldn’t brook any Protestants under his reign. THAT’s religious persecution!

As for what happened AFTER my mom’s family fled the Russian invasion of ’44, and after Yugoslavia became a Marxist conglomerate of ethno-religiously different states, here’s a little light reading. A representative snippet:

The Church has repeatedly declared that it is being unjustly constrained by the authorities. Belgrade, however, has attempted to pose as the guarantor of freedom of conscience, and the constitutional codes since 1953 have all guaranteed freedom of belief and worship. A book published in 1962 laid down what is still the official line on the subject: “The principle of freedom of conscience and of the separation of Church and State means that religion is the private concern of Yugoslav citizens. It is no concern of the state whether a citizen belongs to one faith or another belongs to none at all.”

So no, the Catholic church and the traditional family were not “attacked”. The church was simply not given standing to meddle in the affairs of state. Yugoslavia’s government was secular, and religion was deemed a private matter. As it in fact SHOULD be.

The separation of church and state is a democratic principle widely accepted all over Europe and the Americas. Tito’s Yugoslavia was ironically more in line with that principle than either Canada or the US has ever been. But that didn’t stop the church — or its devotees, such as Tanya Granic — from whining about how “persecuted” they were for not being put in charge of everything, right down to the contents of a woman’s uterus! The fact that the Yugoslav government left such matters to individual conscience must have been terribly galling. But “persecution” it is not.

As for the ridiculous contention that “it was official policy to attack the traditional family and the bond between parents and children”, there was no such policy. Children are not the mental clones of their parents; differences of opinion will arise regardless of who’s in charge of the land or what their ideology is. If children and parents do not get along, it is not the government’s fault; again, it lies with the individuals. If parents are hidebound traditionalists but children are determined to live better lives in modern times, one can only put it down to the children’s free will…and the eternal urge of younger generations to do better than their predecessors did.

In short, Tanya is lying here. And it doesn’t get any more truthful from there on out, either:

In 2014, while eight months pregnant (and on medication with a serious related illness) I spoke at a Catholic Croatian youth conference, at a Croatian Catholic Church in Ontario. I expressed my shock (“vomit in disbelief” was the emotive phrase I used) that the then-government of Croatia, a land only recently free, was embracing a policy of compulsory sex-ed and promotion of the doctrine of gay marriage on the children. My comment of sickened disbelief was not aimed at gay marriage per se, but at the fact that so many lives had been lost to secure our freedom of religion, only to have new oppressors emerge some 20 years later.

Since when do pregnancy, illness and medication turn someone into a bigot who hates comprehensive (NOT “compulsory”) sex education? And since when do they turn anyone into a bigot who can’t stand to see LGBT+ people start to enjoy the same rights and privileges we cis-het straight folk have always had? To the point where said bigot wants to “vomit in disbelief” when those rights are implemented? Since NEVER. At most, they might just bring out what bigotry was already there. And of course, said bigotry has a large and captive audience in the Catholic church, where it has long been an official policy…which, among other things, has driven a wedge between straight parents and queer kids. But don’t expect to see Tanya try to mend THAT broken family bond! She’s all about wrecking it and leaving it wrecked.

And she’s all about the doctrine of never allowing gay marriage, too…because the church needs self-hating closeted queers to populate its priesthoods and nunneries, and keep the oppression going and the tithes flowing forever.

And oh, how nice of her to slam LGBT+ people as “new oppresssors”, too. Because they’re finally out from under the bootheels of church and state, both here and in Croatia. Yes, how oppressive it is to no longer have any cause to think you’re better than they are! Whatever next…RESPECT? Oh, the humanity!

As a practicing Catholic, I support the teachings of the Catholic Church, including the traditional definition of marriage. I support that teaching, and I also believe in the dignity of all individuals. I am also a proud Canadian, and I obey our laws, even those I disagree with. In my campaign for Ontario PC leader, and in Mississauga Centre, not once did I comment on the issue of same-sex marriage. That is a long-settled federal issue, not a provincial one.

There’s a lot of BS to unpack here, but let’s continue where we left off above. The “dignity of all individuals”, as I’ve said, is diminished if you’re LGBT+, under Catholic dogma. You can live as an ostensible celibate, you can live in the closet, you can live a lie and marry heterosexually and as a cis-male or cis-female when you’re really trans or non-binary, and so on. You can struggle with yourself on a daily basis to survive and remain sane. It’s an existence, but it’s not a life. And it sure as hell is NOT dignified.

The “traditional definition of marriage”, as posited by the church of Rome, is by nature exclusionary and confining. If you support THAT and want to re-enshrine it as the law of this land, you support bigotry and oppression. And you have no place calling yourself a “proud Canadian”. You can go back to Croatia and fight for your worn-out old bigotries there, if that’s your position. You don’t “obey our laws”, you are actively campaigning to undermine them.

As for “not once did I comment on same-sex marriage”, that might be true on the very topmost surface of it. But someone certainly wasn’t shy about commenting on the mechanics of certain activities that might take place in a same-sex union, say, between two men. Or need I refer you back to this?

During Thursday’s PC leadership debate, Granic Allen implored moderator Steve Paikin to let her “talk about the sex-ed,” describing it as her “number one priority.”

Pressed by Paikin on what other ideas she has in mind to improve education, since “sex-ed isn’t going to improve math scores,” Granic Allen replied:

“Sure, but it’ll definitely stop distracting students and maybe they could focus a bit more on math if they weren’t talking about anal sex in the classroom.”

Or same-sex marriage, eh? Or the fact that LGBT+ people exist at all, which IS in the comprehensive sex-ed curriculum currently prevalent in Ontario? The same curriculum Tanya is trying to abolish as head of a group called, oh so cutely, Parents As First Educators. (The fact that this “first educator” comes from a region once noted for its feudal backwardness and widespread illiteracy is rather salient here, no?)

One thing that hated curriculum is NOT obsessed with, unlike Tanya herself, is anal sex. (Which straight people also do, and rather often, too.) Who’s the distracted one, again?

The accusation by the Liberals and the press that I am somehow against the dignity and human rights of LGBT+ people — or to use the popular term, “homophobic” — is a lie. Furthermore, it is a slur against the Catholic faith and, indeed, against people of all faiths who hold their religious values dear, but who are also responsible citizens of a free and democratic and tolerant Canada.

Simmer down, Tanya. Quoting you verbatim when you say something incredibly bigoted and stupid is NOT “slander”, nor is it “a slur against the Catholic faith”, and blah blah blabbity blah blah. It’s a fact that the official religious policies of many faiths ARE homophobic. Including those of your beloved Catholic church. And they do deny dignity to many people. A good 10%, at minimum, of any given country’s population. The press has a right to note that, as well as your apparently unreserved support for that. In fact, they have a DUTY to note that. Failing to do so would be a dereliction of their responsibility to the public.

And your political opponents (who are not just Liberals, but also NDP and Greens) have a right to challenge you on that. It’s not their fault if you’re not up to the challenge, and your only “defence” is to write dumb opinion pieces like this…for a newspaper that has a long track record of letting far-right nonsense go unchallenged.

Oh, and Tanya?

Get over yourself, at long sweet last.