The classical liberal's worst nightmare

Bob Tarantino says the Conservatives are planning to campaign on the issue of repealing same-sex marriage legislation should they form a majority government. He thinks it's a very bad idea, and so do I:

One can only assume that to be the case; which is to say, the Tories better have some pretty staggering poll numbers. Because it seems they want to have their cake and eat it, too: after arguing that the proper forum for the decision on same-sex marriage was Parliament (which is probably correct), they now have to come up with some rationale for ignoring the decision of Parliament (or the impending decision) and trying to substitute a different decision of Parliament. Which, in and of itself, is fine: just because a legislature makes a decision one day doesn't mean that the issue is decided for all time; societies need the flexibility to re-visit matters. But are there really enough people that agree with the Tories that it makes sense for them to make this the primary issue in a campaign? Especially in the teeth of anti-conservative, pro-SSM media coverage?

Maybe the Tories have numbers and strategic advice which indicate that strong advocacy on their part of traditional marriage will be enough to shave sufficient numbers of supporters away from the Liberals in "marginal" ridings to tip the balance of Parliamentary power in an upcoming election ("marginal" in the sense that the Liberal margin of victory wasn't so large in the last election), but that seems to be a long shot: the "conservative immigrants" voting bloc which the CPC seems to think it can sway would need to be awfully large to switch the election results (especially since, I assume, those immigrant communities are concentrated in urban ridings where the Liberal margin of victory is rather high).

One further danger: if the Tories are explicit in their determination to ensure that if/when they win a majority they will repeal same-sex marriage legislation (and they need to decide whether that will be the case whether they win this year, next year or five years from now), there may be a countervailing loss which makes up for attracting "conservative immigrants". In other words, how many people out there who would otherwise be willing to vote Tory will decline to do so because they have been assured that a CPC majority means repeal of the legislation? Are the numbers sufficiently small to outweigh potential gains from anti-SSM voters? When the numbers are as tight as they seem to be when determining majority/minority governments, it would seem that the CPC needs to be extremely sure that this gambit is a winning one.

Canadians who vigorously oppose gay marriage have nowhere to go except to the Conservatives, unless they waste their votes on the Christian Heritage Party. It's the fiscally-conservative-but-socially-liberal voter the Tories need to put them over the top, and who knows how many will be driven away by a campaign like this? I'll still vote for the Conservatives because of, well, pretty much every issue except same-sex marriage - but many, many more will stay home, spoil their ballots or hold their noses and vote Liberal.

Posted by damian at June 28, 2005 06:22 PM | TrackBack