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Patrick Brown (centre) in Gay Pride parade

Sept. 12, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – It appears that the slithering Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown has finally managed to flip and then flop on Premier Kathleen Wynne’s radical sex education one last time. After winking and making friendly noises towards social conservatives when trying to secure the leadership of the party, he then rushed to declare his true allegiance by marching in a local Pride Parade at the earliest opportunity lest anyone should think he actually meant any of it. Now he has come firmly out of the closet and affirmed that no, he doesn’t think that there is any reason to oppose the mandatory state sex education opposed by tens of thousands of parents. Social conservatives have been cynically betrayed again. Not that any of us are surprised, mind you.

The simple fact is that there are more people who believe in the tenets of the Sexual Revolution than there are people who still believe, with any sincerity, in the Judeo-Christian principles that shaped our civilization for centuries. The idea that sex should be limited to a monogamous heterosexual marriage lasting a lifetime is seen by most as an quaint and archaic concept from another age. Public manifestations of exhibitionist sexuality and the gluttonous private consumption of depraved pornography are the rarely-questioned norm. Pride parades, for instance, are often funded by the government while political leaders are expected to show up and march lockstep with nude sex activists. Ideas that would have been seen as insane a shockingly short time ago—TIME Magazine published a photo of a bearded transsexual “chest-feeding” a baby last week, for example—are now accepted with the utmost solemnity by our nation’s leaders. This has left the bosses of so-called conservative political parties in quite the predicament.

We social conservatives have to do a more effective job of lobbying ruthlessly on the issues that matter to us: the right to life, parental rights in education, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.

What should be obvious to traditionalist Christians by now is that most (although not all) Conservative politicians are embarrassed of us. Yes, social conservatives still make up between 30 to 40% of the Conservative Party of Canada’s base as well as a substantial portion of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario’s base. But Conservative politicians spend an enormous amount of time assuring everyone that they do not actually believe any of the weird, retrograde views of their idiot rural constituents, and seek to do everything they can to assure the public that they are just as libertine as the Liberals of Wynne and Trudeau.

You know things are bad, for example, when Conservative leadership candidates march in the Toronto Pride Parade, but assure us that they’re very different from the Liberals because they’re tolerant enough to say that we’re actually allowed to believe the stupid things we believe. Thus, the bumpkins who don’t believe that the government should be teaching their children that a man can possess a vagina can rest easy knowing that their politicians have their backs.

One of the few positions Conservative politicians permit social conservatives to hold within their parties is that of scapegoat. Whenever a Conservative politician loses an election, for example, he or she can jettison any actual self-examination by instead pointing to “extreme elements” in the party who believe killing babies in the womb is wrong or that marriage cannot be redefined by Members of Parliament. No matter what the situation may be, social conservatives can always be blamed, marginalized, and told that we need to shut up and just vote, or we might actually cost these fair-weather friends the next election, too. And then who would look out for us in the halls of power, huh?

For one example of such thinking, look no further than so-called conservative commentator Tasha Kheiriddin’s post-election analysis of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s defeat. From the beginning of his career, Stephen Harper has followed a policy of keeping social conservatives in the tent but off the platform. He appointed most of the Supreme Court justices who gave us legal euthanasia. He personally interfered in Parliamentary procedure to ensure a discussion of sex-selection abortion would never reach the floor of the House of Commons. And after all of that, Kheirridin announced that the reason Harper had lost the election was that he’d pandered too much to the so-cons. He’d appeared too radical, because he gave the slightest of nods here and there towards a constituency he desperately needed to attain power. See the pattern? Harper promises he will not address the abortion issue. Social conservative voters cast their ballots for Harper anyways. After years in power, Harper loses an election. It is the fault of the social conservatives that this happened. If the bungling Patrick Brown blows the next election, you can be sure he’ll blame it on members of his party who opposed Kathleen Wynne’s sex education.

We social conservatives have to do a more effective job of lobbying ruthlessly on the issues that matter to us: the right to life, parental rights in education, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. Too often, we’re bought off by Conservative politicians who promise to lower our taxes and help our businesses and fatten our wallets while the erosion of our freedoms continues more or less unabated. We have to apply the pressure and the force that we have at our disposal—after all, there can be no Conservative government without social conservatives casting their ballots for such a government. We have to start being able to see through those politicians who promise that they care about “our” issues—a designation that immediately reveals that they intend to do nothing.

Conservative politicians are betting on two things. First of all, they think that they can continue to buy us off with desirable economic policies. History has proven them right on this one. And secondly, they’re betting that our distaste for politicians like Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne combined with a lack of a viable alternative will drive us to hold our noses and vote, but vote just the same. Many social conservatives voted for Stephen Harper not because of what he would do, but because of what he would not do—promote abortion relentlessly across the country, fund abortion overseas, or pass radical transgender legislation, for example. Social conservatives, in spite of our numbers, have traditionally been willing to vote for those who promise to do us the least harm rather than someone who is promising to actively speak on our behalf.

Don’t get me wrong. There are quite a number of admirable and trustworthy federal and provincial politicians. But they are not in the majority. Social conservatives have been bought off and placated for a long time, but with battles brewing between governments and parents and legislators and Christian schools, while cases that threaten freedom of religion and association wind their way towards the Supreme Court, it’s time we banded together and started lobbying with the force we have traditionally been so reluctant to exert.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.