Parliament rulz!

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s Parliament upheld a 2005 law allowing same-sex marriage on Thursday when it threw out a bid by the minority Conservative government to revisit the contentious issue.

If you read between the lines (not hard) on this one you’ll see something like this:

Stephen Harper had to appease his neo-con backers so he put a motion forward that was destined to fail. He wanted it to fail, though, because he wants to win more seats next election and he knows that he’s more likely to get them if he stays the fuck out of people’s bedrooms and doesn’t try to get around the Supreme Court of Canada.

I am not snarking the country of my birth (the US) here, at least not much, but this is yet another reason I am glad to stay on the side of my naturalized home. Because gay marriage has not yet threatened mine or turned child molesters loose on my street, you know?

Personally I am becoming impressed with Harper’s intelligence and willingness to pretend he is not the crazy right-wing guy his history seems to indicate that he is.  He is a leader, actually, and I’m surprised. He’s not leading in a direction I particularly want to go, but I am admiring his style balancing a minority government. (Even if his foreign policy is so whacked he loses even style points for that.)