By Patrick B. Craine
October 30, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new biography about Pierre Elliot Trudeau reveals the great influence exerted on his political decisions by the many women with whom he associated romantically. For pro-life and pro-family advocates, these revelations shed light on the character and motivations of the man who opened the legal door to Canada's now-rampant sexual permissiveness and abortion culture.
The book, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau 1968-2000, is historian John English's second volume on the former Canadian Prime Minister. English drew on Trudeau's personal papers, as well as interviews with his family and friends. While he focuses on Trudeau's work as prime minister, he also delves into the man's well-protected private life, including his many romantic attachments and their affect on his politics.
English explains, for example, how Trudeau, greatly distressed by the breakdown of his marriage to Margaret, chose against an election in 1977, despite strong pressure due to his popularity at the time. “It was Trudeau's worst political decision,” writes English. “Reasons of the heart, sad ones, explain Trudeau's lack of will for an election in the late summer of 1977.” The election waited until 1979, when he lost to Joe Clark.
One of Trudeau's lovers, Margot Kidder, the biographer relates, convinced him to launch his peace initiative in 1983 after he had approved the testing of cruise missiles in Canadian territory. He actually brought the actress and peace activist to a dinner in Washington, says English, where she “argued vehemently with senior Reagan administration officials while he urged her on by squeezing her thigh each time she scored a point.”
Trudeau involved his attachments in state functions on other occasions as well. He once revealed to Margaret, says English, that he had given two of his mistresses the opportunity to perform at a reception of the Governor General.
Trudeau “flirted continually and outrageously and, despite his concern for privacy, he seemed to enjoy flaunting his attractiveness in the presence of women,” says English.
Trudeau's womanizing, says Mary Ellen Douglas of Campaign Life Coalition, “was a part of his character, his weak character.” She added that she believes that Trudeau's permissiveness in his personal life “certainly” had an effect on his legislation – namely his campaign to liberalize Canada's laws on sexuality.
The man famously declared that “there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” and “what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code.” Using this rationale, he proposed his devastating Omnibus Bill, passed while he was Prime Minister in 1969, through which he won the legalization of abortion, contraception, and homosexual acts. The year prior his government had legalized divorce as well.
As a professed Catholic, Trudeau justified these massive policy changes by insisting that he could not impose his personal morality on the nation.
But, opines Douglas, “I think he was laughing at it. He made sure that his lack of morality became law. So he wasn't separating anything except to pretend that he wasn't imposing morality, when in fact, everything about him was imposing immorality, and he made sure he legislated it.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
The Real Pierre Trudeau: Father of Canada's Permissive Society
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2000/oct/001003a.html