Toronto mayoral candidate Ford: "I support traditional marriage."

[lightningandsnow]

At a press event outside Toronto City Hall today, mayoral candidate Rob Ford embraced the endorsement of a fundamentalist Christian pastor who says Pride is "immoral" and suggests that the "moral foundation" of society is being dismantled by gay marriage.

Asked by a reporter if he supports gay marriage, Ford said: "No, I support traditional marriage. I always have, but if people want, to each their own. I'm not worried about what people do in their private life. I look out for taxpayers' money, and to each his own when it comes to what happens behind closed doors."

Ford made the comments at a presser where Rev Wendell Brereton announced that he was dropping out of the mayoral race and throwing his support behind Ford. Brereton is now running for council in Ward 6.

Brereton's mayoral campaign website previously stated, "My kind of Toronto doesn't parade immorality and call it pride." That section has been removed, but the comment can be seen by viewing the Google cache.

Brereton's website also took a shot at gay mayoral candidate George Smitherman: "Men who don't truly comprehend the reality of the importance of the God defined family will dismantle the very ethical fibers of what a healthy democratic civilization is." That section of the website has also been removed.

http://www.xtra.ca/blog/national/post/2010/08/04/TO-mayoral-candidate-Rob-Ford-I-support-traditional-marriage.aspx

:puke:

[joeybee12]

1. Nice to know our neighbors to the north also have their share of assholes...n/t

[offog]

3. Yeah, I'm pretty embarrassed about this.

:eyes: In Saskatchewan, the conservative Saskatchewan Party government is currently asking for a court opinion on whether they can pass legislation allowing marriage commissioners to refuse to perform marriages that go against their religious beliefs. Whatever the government's official line is, this is about same-sex marriage.

One of the arguments against this proposed legislation is that marriage commissioners are public servants, and therefore should be required to serve everyone equally. (Churches still have the right to choose who they want to do weddings for.) Firefighters and police officers don't have the legal right to refuse to protect you because they don't approve of your "lifestyle". And if you work in an ER, you can't decide "I'm not saving that guy's life because he's gay."

There's also the question of where to draw the line. Someone might have religious objections to performing marriage for divorced people, mixed race couples, or people who lived together or had kids before marrying.

I don't see the big deal about same-sex marriage. The term "gay lifestyle" tends to be associated with promiscuity, right? So if some gay couples are in committed enough relationships that they want to get married, don't freaking complain!

[Euromutt]

2. So... multiple wives, plus concubines and "handmaidens"?

Because I'm pretty certain that if I go through the Old Testament, that's the sort of thing I'm going to find to be sufficiently predominant to term it "traditional." and of course, "handmaiden" is for all practical purposes a euphemism for "a slave you keep around to fuck."

As with so many disputes, the claim that history supports the validity of one's claim depends entirely on how far back in history you're willing to go.

[sui generis]

4. Men who swear at goats.

"morality" is a term used most often by those who have the least.

There is NO SUCH THING as a moral foundation. There IS such a thing as a value system, the emergent property of which is a moral code or a code of ethics, but it's bullshit goat herder talk to say "moral foundation".

Anyway, marriage is about making a binding legal commitment to a defined "family" unit, and GAY has nothing to do with that. There is NO SUCH THING as "gay" marriage. There is same-gender marriage if one needs to describe the participants, but just as there is not such thing as "opposite" marriage or "heterosexual marriage", marriage is between two individuals who have mutually agreed to define their union as a family in the eyes of the law.

Dear Ford, take your "morality" out of our bedrooms and living rooms and keep it in your own damn house.