FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
You are stupid
Klein government shows little respect for Albertans' intelligence
By Hamish MacAulayWhile the Klein government knows it has to explain its decisions, it believes voters are gullible enough to buy any old explanation. Family and Community Social Services Minister Lyle Oberg's announcement that the government banned homosexual couples from being foster parents because discrimination against homosexuals makes their home environment unstable is a painful demonstration of how this government believes it can do as it pleases without having to come up with even a reasonable explanation.
Albertans have been plagued over the years by the high-handed nature of the politicians elected to look after our best interests. The federal Liberals and their National Energy Policy, Peter Lougheed spending millions to create an Olympic ski hill no one wanted, and Steve West wasting billions of dollars for the cause of privatization are just some of the touching examples of how arrogant our politicians really are. Now Oberg steps to the podium to explain that the Alberta government is simply forced to discriminate against homosexuals because homosexuals are discriminated against.
The announcement was pure politics. Former FCSS Minister Stockwell Day, a brother in the cause of social conservatism, made the decision to ban homosexual couples from being foster parents, without explanation, about a year ago. Since then there has been, no doubt, a long and arduous search for at least one reason why homosexuals should not be foster parents. In the emotionally charged and irrational debate over homosexual parents, no credible evidence has ever been presented that being gay makes an individual incapable of parenting. Unfortunately, this is a group that is assumed guilty until it proves itself innocent. Based on this bastardization of the law, the Alberta government found the best of the lame reasons for a decision it had already made.
Oberg was feeling some pressure over that fact that there is at least one gay foster parent in the system who has provided quality care and left no reason to be banned. Despite that pressure, Oberg had no reason to make the announcement except it would make him popular with those frighteningly substantial portions of the Alberta population who consider homosexuality the greatest threat to western civilization since communism. Make the announcement he did, and the ever-troubled foster care system was put back in the limelight.
Only tales of tragedy from the foster care system seem to make the news. The system has all the problems inherent in trying to govern the reality of family relationships using a bureaucracy and its rules. Given the diversity of people, the rules will fail in some cases. Bureaucrats cannot be given, or do not want, the power to make independent decisions based on the individuals involved. If you are only following the rules, the rules get blamed for the mistakes. Now we are faced with one more rule that institutionalizes groups and denies the individual. If you are gay, no matter what your qualifications as a parent may be, you cannot be a foster parent. It could not be simpler for the government.
The situation bears a striking resemblance to politicians in the Southern US during the '50s explaining that segregation was there to protect blacks from the whites who hated them. The argument did not hold water then and it does not hold water now. But it does not have to because the Klein government is arrogant enough to believe that explanations for decisions are only a required courtesy. As such, they do not have to make any particular sense as long as they say things most Albertans want to hear.
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