OTTAWA, August 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canada’s outspoken women’s organization on life and family issues has slammed Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird for imposing what it says is “his own perspective on homosexuality” in foreign countries such as Uganda, Kenya, and Russia that have passed laws aimed at preserving the traditional family structure.
“Just who does John Baird think he is, using taxpayers’ money to promote his own personal agenda and endeavouring to set standards of the laws of foreign countries?” asked Gwen Landolt, National Vice-President of REAL Women of Canada, in a press release yesterday.
REAL Women criticized Baird for awarding $200,000 of Canadian taxpayers’ money by way of the Department of Foreign Affairs to special interest groups in Uganda and Kenya that promoted homosexual activity as a right.
Last October Baird denounced Uganda at an international summit in Quebec City for violating gay rights and oppressing homosexuals. Uganda has consistently stood against pressure from international gay activists and the UN to accept Western sexual values, passing in 2005 a constitutional amendment that criminalized same-sex ‘marriage’ and specified that “marriage is lawful only if entered into between a man and a woman.”
The speaker of the Ugandan Parliament accused Baird at that time of harboring a “colonial attitude” towards African nations and meddling in the country’s internal affairs.
REAL women also singled out Baird for “working extensively behind the scenes to prevent Russia from passing legislation designated to protect Russian minors from homosexual propaganda.”
Russia's anti-gay propaganda law, signed this summer by Vladimir Putin, fines Russians advocating for gay ‘marriage’ the equivalent of $156 (U.S.). While the wildly popular measure has been misreported as criminalizing homosexual relations, it actually bars any public communications “intended to form in a minor a nontraditional sexual foundation.”
“Baird blasted these laws as hateful, anti-gay and intolerant,” REAL Women stated.
The women’s organization questioned why Baird would want to export the tyranny homosexual activists hold in Canada to foreign countries. “It is a fact, that homosexual activists in Canada are intolerant of any resistance to their demands, and, as such have become a tyrannical minority.”
“Conscientious objections based on religion and traditional values have led, in Canada, to public officials, educators and business owners facing heavy fines and lengthy court battles for rejecting the homosexual lifestyle. This is not democracy. It is not equality,” the organization stated.
Baird defended himself through a spokesman, equating his actions in question with the “promotion and protection of human rights”, adding that such actions are a an “integral part of Canada’s foreign policy,” according to the CBC.
Baird told a gathering in Montreal last September that Canada will promote homosexual rights as a key component of foreign policy.
“We’re working with allies like the EU and the United States on encouraging the decriminalization of homosexuality,” he said at that time.
Baird’s spokesman called Canada’s promotion of homosexual rights in countries around the world “a position that is supported by a vast majority of Canadians.”
But REAL Women called it “highly offensive to conservative taxpayers” that Baird would impose this “strange, intolerant world[view]” on sovereign countries, “despite their own cultures and religion which find this unreasonable and unacceptable.”
“He cannot and must not undermine other countries’ sovereignty and dignity, rooted in stable family structures and religious faith, in order to impose his own value system on them.”
“Mr. Baird’s actions are destructive to the conservative base in Canada and causing collateral damage to his party,” the organization stated.
Contact:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6
Phone: 613-992-4211
Fax: 613-941-6900
E-mail: [email protected]