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Defenders of Family Boycott CBC News Sunday Homosexual 'Marriage' Love Fest

TORONTO, February 13, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Programme directors at the CBC were left scrambling today as Canada's most well known and best defenders of the traditional family boycotted the upcoming CBC discussion on their airing of a live gay 'marriage'. The CBC's history of bias and distortion is so well known that the pro-family groups rejected participation in the national broadcaster's televised 'debate.'

In addition to LifeSiteNews.com, the list of groups which were asked to come onto the program and boycotted included, the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, Catholic Civil Rights League, Toronto Right to Life, Campaign Life Coalition, Marriage Canada, David Mainse, Canada Family Action Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Toronto Chinese Evangelical Ministerial Fellowship, Islamic Society of North America, Real Women, Muslim Lawyers Association.

Canadian Senator Anne Cools, Conservative MP Vic Toews, Tyndale College's Brian Stiller, McGill Ethicist Margaret Sommerville, and Steve Jalsevac from LifeSiteNews.com, were set to be on the CBC panel but, after consultation between the groups, even Senator Cools and MP Toews opted out of the program.

Jalsevac said, "I had to reconsider since the perception of the program will be dominated by the initial images of this homosexual 'wedding'. With the television medium, images unfortunately trump facts and reason. The CBC directors are well aware of this. That will make it impossible to achieve balance in the program. The carefully orchestrated initial 'marriage' part will set a stage in which any criticism of gay 'marriage' could wrongly be perceived by many viewers as overly negative. Given my own past experience on similar CBC programs, I was extremely reluctant in the first place to participate, but having seen the media hype for this program it is certain nothing has changed with the CBC."

In the past, the CBC has manipulated selective clips from interviews to unfairly present opinion opposed to its own extremely liberal bias. "I can already see the selective clips from the discussion inserted between touching scenes of the 'wedding' on subsequent CBC news reports," said Jalsevac.

Explaining his decision not to participate Toews said, "I felt very uncomfortable about participating in this program because I too felt that it was a manipulation of events rather than a reporting of news or engaging in a democratic dialogue."

Michael Connell of the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) went from promotion of groups to get involved with the program to spearheading the effort to have the groups boycott after sensing the "set up." A CCRL press release on the matter says, "CBC has gone from reporting the news to manufacturing it, from reporting public discussion to manipulating it." CCRL Vice President Phil Horgan notes, "Not surprisingly, all of the groups which have been involved in court cases in three provinces chose to stay away from the staged event."

Natalie Hudson, of Toronto Right to Life explained in an email to the CBC her reason for refusing to appear on the program. "The context of a sensational, live gay marriage will put any reasonable objections at an enormous disadvantage," said Hudson. "The whole thing is so one-sided - our presence there will only lend credibility to something that does not deserve it." Hudson added, "that personalizing the marriage with the stories behind the two men and how they fell in love etc. is objectionable, because it pulls on the heart strings when we need to be thinking rationally about this issue. Personal feelings do not trump norms within society especially when those norms, or natural principles, are what society depends upon for its existence."

The CBC News Sunday program will air February 15, the day which Christian groups across the country have designated to celebrate traditional marriage.

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