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Gay Activists Target Public Recognition of Prominent Canadians Due to Support for Traditional Marriage

by Hilary White

TORONTO/OTTAWA, June 9, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two items appearing in the Canadian mainstream press today show that advocates of homosexual ideologies can claim not the slightest deviation from their ideology.

Margaret Somerville, an ethicist at McGill University who holds mildly pro-family views and has made presentations to Parliament in favour of same-sex civil unions, was targeted today when Ryerson University in Toronto announced she would be receiving an honorary award. Somerville holds that the issue is not about homosexuality, but about children who, she says, “have a right to a mother and father, and preferably their biological parents.”

With her support for early-term abortion and civil unions, Somerville could hardly be called a rabid social conservative, but she has nonetheless been the subject of hate mail and threats. Spokesmen for Ryerson say Somerville’s degree is for her work in medical ethics. The school has not said it will revoke the honorary degree.

RyePRIDE, the homosexual advocacy group at Ryerson, vowed to stage protests when Somerville is granted the degree June 19, the same day as the start of “Pride Week” – the officially sponsored annual Toronto festival of homosexuality - and has started an online petition to “disinvite” her. Mandy Ridley of RyePRIDE said, “There's nothing honorary (sic) about homophobia.”

The founding director of McGill University's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, told the Montreal Gazette that she was not phased by the protests: “If these guys want to demonstrate against me, that's their right.”

In a similar instance, Rabbi Reuven Bulka has also come under attack by homosexual activists who say his position on marriage is also “homophobic.” The Students’ Association at Ottawa’s Carleton University object to Rabbi Bulka’s association with the National Association of Research and Therapy Homosexuality, a clinical research organization that helps individuals leave the homosexual lifestyle.

Shawn Menard, head of the Students’ Association asked the administration not to award an honorary degree to Rabbi Bulka saying that the university guarantees all students the right to “feel comfortable in their environment.”

Bulka admitted the therapy idea is controversial, but said that rights are not one-sided. “What they are denying to people who want this is the freedom to choose that too,” he said.

Bulka, who will be accepting the honorary Doctor of Law degree, is another prominent voice in the Canadian political scene that barely qualifies as socially conservative. In 2004, his testimony to the Canadian Senate that the Canadian Jewish community saw nothing wrong with the use of human embryos for live human experimentation helped to pass the cloning and stem-cell legislation that had been vehemently opposed by pro-life groups.

“There can be differing views, but it does not translate into bigotry,” Bulka told the Ottawa Citizen.

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