Last week Kathleen Wynne very boldly challenged Stephen Harper by asking her Attorney General, Madeline Meilleur, to give her opinion of the constitutionality of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEP).
Naturally, the learned men of the Conservative Party wouldn’t let this uppity sapphist’s contemptuous behaviour go unchallenged. Harper could have attacked Wynne, but Mafioso dons like to keep their hands clean, which is why Harper usually keeps his mouth shut. Peter MacKay could have made a statement, but he stepped into another pile last week so they’re keeping him away from the microphone for now.
So it was up to Canada’s favourite condescending anti-sex harridan, Joy Smith, to read the script.
Notice how Smith shakes her head disapprovingly at the very idea of Kathleen Wynne, her face contorting as though a bad smell just hit her, while reading what someone, somewhere, thought was a sharp attack. Meanwhile, in the background, Michelle Rempel does her best to not burst out laughing.
“It is deeply disappointing,” Smith concludes, “that Kathleen Wynne and the leader of the Liberal Party appear to disagree with Canadians and support the legalization of prostitution!”
“Hear hear!” a man from the Conservative bench shouts as Smith finishes her scripted statement, proud of her for passionately defending the government’s legislative assault on sex workers’ lives, safety, and bodies.
There is so much garbage in her statement it’s unbelievable; most if it I don’t have to explain to you because if you’re here reading me you already know. She plays the emotion card and hits all the notes in the Conservatives’ playbook, telling two lies for every one breath.
But the most telling thing is what she didn’t say. Not once does she discuss constitutionality.
So many provisions in PCEP are unconstitutional and will be struck down because, according to Conservative Senator Don Plett, the purpose was to deliberately make sex workers’ lives unsafe. Constitutionality was the rationale for Wynne asking AG Meilleur to assess these new laws, and that was what Smith completely ignored.
Just for the record, this isn’t the first time Joy Smith attacked Kathleen Wynne, but this is the first time she attacked her directly. The last time she attacked Kathleen Wynne was indirect; it was an attack on Wynne, her (now) wife, and thousands of LGBTQ Canadians who wanted marriage equality.
Back in 2005 there was a bill before Parliament, The Civil Marriage Act, to make marriage equality legal in Canada. It passed, but Smith attacked both it and the idea of gay marriage then. “I believe in the definition of marriage as being the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others,” she said in a speech in the House.
The words she used then to attack marriage equality are stunning in light of what she has done to attack sex workers throughout this whole ordeal we’re going through today – not to mention ironic. What she said to attack marriage equality in some parts can actually be used to defend the rights of sex workers today.
“This issue should not be before Parliament today…. This issue has become too political,” she said. “This is about democracy. In our great nation we have the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and the freedom to live the kind of lives that we choose to live. Making a law that will cause marriage to just go away with the stroke of a pen late at night and probably sometime this week is wrong. It is wrong to do that. I am baffled as to why [this Bill] is before Parliament.”
You can just swap out “marriage” in that sentence with “sex workers” and see just how much of a confused wreck her mind must be at times. By parliament not recognizing what her personal definition of what a marriage is then we are as a nation ending all marriage. That makes absolutely no sense, but that’s precisely how she thinks. She centred herself in her own personal universe then, as she does now, and would like to use the power of the state to legislate her own precious personal feels into law.
Other parts of her speech though are consistent to her position on sex workers. She doesn’t dislike LGBTQ persons per se. She’s no bigot, she’ll have you know! Sure, they deserve rights, but not all the rights. LGBTQ persons don’t deserve the freedom to marry, but they can live together if they want. Just like how sex workers don’t deserve to have safety or security or an income, but they can still call themselves sex workers if they like. Joy Smith will gladly partake in removing your rights in a delicate and genteel way if it means it makes her feel warm and fuzzy about herself.
Her warped logic that marriage equality was an attack on freedom came to a crescendo wherein she invokes the image of a Canadian soldier, her father, fighting against the German war machine in Europe:
“My father went to war during the Second World War and defended our country. He did not come back to tell people how to live. He did not come back to say that there had to be rules and regulations. I am appalled that the bill is before Parliament today because it is not a bill about equality. It is a bill about discrimination against people who are now married and have been married for years.”
If that ended with “it is a bill about discrimination against people who are sex workers and have been sex workers for years” we’d have a bang-on analysis of PCEP. Joy, if what you claim about your father is true, your father would have hated PCEP… and your past attacks on marriage equality.
If a notorious homophobe is the Conservative Party’s only card to play against Kathleen Wynne in the fight for sex workers’ rights, then keep at it Conservatives. Have Smith speak every single day.
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