Who to vote for?

Yesterday, Stephen Harper said that, if he won the election he would pass a law declaring marriage to be between a man and a woman, and he'd allow a free vote in Parliament on abortion and capital punishment both.

This from a man whose platform (until yesterday) I had very few reservations about. Now I don't know what to think.

We'll tackle these things one at a time.

GAY MARRIAGE

Judging from the rhetoric I've heard on a radio call-in show today, Harper's earned himself a lot of support around here, coming out against same-sex unions. There was a truly frightening creature on the air, claiming that 'the gay lifestyle' is anti-life. When the moderator asked him why he felt that way, he said that 'two men piggybacking all day and all night can't produce a child, and neither can two women doing whatever it is that gets them sexually turned on'.
As a married straight man who has had some fertility issues, I'm deeply offended on SO many levels when I hear ugly claptrap like this.
1) Marriage, whatever the fundycostals have to say about it, has nothing whatsoever to do with kids. I don't recall getting a kid handed to me when I exchanged vows with my wife. And while those vows included being the 'father of our children' because we *do* want kids (hence the adoption plans), the traditional marriage vows make no mention of children at all.
How many thousands of couples choose not to have children? Does that make their marriage any less valid? Of course not.
2) I'll come right out and say it: there *is* a "gay lifestyle", practised by some homosexuals, that caters to the worst stereotypes that straights have of them. BUT...the majority of gay people don't fit that lifestyle pattern at all. Since July of last year, over sixty thousand same-sex unions have happened world wide, almost half of them less than an hour's drive from me. Many of them are between couples who have been married in all but name for years, in some cases decades.
3) I defy any straight couple to tell me how their marriage has been affected in any way by these same-sex unions. Mine hasn't. My marriage was a contract between me, my wife, and our God...and nobody else. If your marriage hinges on a couple of lesbians tying the knot next door, buddy, you have problems no marriage counsellor in the world can fix.
4) Person after person on the radio today spoke about the need to "protect" kids from gays. (One wonders how many of them are Catholic.) My gay friends and relatives will have access to our children. I'll make sure of it. And you can damn me to hell all you want, but it won't make a difference.

ABORTION

Being a man, I have no real right to *have* an opinion on this issue. But since that hasn't stopped a lot of other man from expounding ad nauseam, here goes:
I don't believe in abortion as a contraceptive device. I believe in men and women taking responsibility for their sexual activities and any children that may result therefrom. I also don't accept third-trimester abortion, on the grounds that the child can, in most cases, thrive outside the womb, and there are millions of couples out there looking to adopt, like us. BUT: I certainly don't think life begins at conception. Otherwise there'd be manslaughter charges pending from every miscarriage, which is just preposterous. A fetus fits the classic definition of a parasite, right down to its sickening the host organism. At any rate, I believe women own their bodies, and taking that right away is tantamount to declaring them unpersons.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

See, here I toe the Conservative line for criminals who have no hope of rehabilitation. And I tend to think that most murderers fall into that category. Certainly the Paul Bernardos of the world do. I firmly believe that those few sick souls who derive pleasure from killing others should be expunged. There seems to me no point in keeping them around for years, at immense cost, to sit and gloat in their cells. So tried and convicted serial killers, spree killers and cop-killers would get the noose in my world.

So we have three social issues here. On one of them, I agree wholeheartedly with Harper's position. On another, I'll agree to the proposed free vote in the Commons, since I know the outcome of that vote will be one I agree with. On the third, I strongly, vehemently disagree with his view.
That said, I'd love to see him *try* to repeal gay marriage. The Supreme Court would have none of it. And what of the thousands of gay couples already married? Would their marriages be annulled? I should think they'd have something to say about that.

I support the Conservative fiscal platform above that of the Liberals (and far above that of the NDP). Also, there's the issue of integrity, and the sad fact that the Liberals, governing for eleven years, have pissed all theirs away. It's time for a change, and the only party having any hope of unseating Martin and his cronies harbours reactionary views on social policy.
I just don't know how to vote here.