Canada's Transgender community is being a little too quick to celebrate the tabling of Bills C-276 and C-279 in the House of Commons.
Don't get me wrong, I fully support what these two bills represent. I just happen to think that this is the wrong time for this legislation.
Why do I think it's the wrong time? Because the Harperites are a form of nastiness that I don't think many people have understood yet. They've shown time and again that they are willing to do the wrong thing for ideological reasons.
Whether that is ramming through an ill-considered "omnibus" get-tough-on-crime bill which will drive Canada's costs through the roof, or giving the government unfettered rights to snoop on all kinds of communications, the Harperites have one thing on their mind - imposing their will upon Canadians.
As we discovered in Alberta in 2009, the "social conservative" faction of the current "Conservatives" are plain old malicious. What happened at the provincial level at Ron Liepert's hand can happen again at the federal level - and it will be all the worse then.
This government can act out of malice, and right now attracting attention from them is bad news - the extreme right wing in both Canada and the US has already decided that the transgender community is a far easier target than the much larger GLB community. If the HarperItes move against trans people, they'll move against GLB as well.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Harper's backbench are working hard right now to pass legislation repealing Gay Marriage, and just for fun any protections that are currently in the civil or criminal laws of this country for GLBT people.
We've got four years of these goons to get through, and I don't think it's going to be the least bit pretty.
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