- OTTAWA -- Canadian Alliance
MP Larry Spencer, his party's family issues critic, says he'd support any
initiative to put homosexuality back in the Criminal Code of Canada.
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- The U.S.-born former Baptist pastor also argues that
the gay- rights movement's recent successes in areas like same-sex marriage
stem from a "well-orchestrated ... conspiracy" that began in
the 1960s.
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- The conspiracy included the seduction and recruitment
of young boys in playgrounds and locker rooms and the deliberate infiltration
of North America's judiciary, schools, the religious community, and the
entertainment industry, he said.
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- The movement's progress in gaining public acceptance
for homosexuality would have been slowed, however, had Pierre Elliott Trudeau
not legalized homosexuality in 1969, according to the MP.
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- "I do believe it was a mistake to have legalized
it," Spencer (Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre) told The Vancouver Sun.
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- While he said no Canadian government would likely have
the "courage" to reverse Trudeau's decision to remove the state
from the nation's bedrooms, Spencer would support any bill that advocated
such a move.
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- "If somebody brought a bill in the House to do that
I'd certainly vote for it. Yeah, I'd like to see that [to] be the case.
It's not that I would want spies in everybody's bedroom or anybody following
anybody.
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- People who have been practising homosexuals for most
of their adult lives, like New Democratic MP Svend Robinson, could transform
themselves into heterosexuals.
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- "I believe he could. I believe he would struggle
with it," said Spencer, pointing out that someone could hate long-distance
running or weightlifting but then train themselves in that area and learn
to love it.
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- "So the human body can be sensitized or de-sensitized.
The mind or the conscience that we have can be sharpened against right
or wrong. It can be de-sensitized to think that whatever wrong that's around
us is nothing but natural and we begin to accept that."
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- "I just wish that there was some way that society
could stand up and say, 'This is not right.' "
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- But Spencer said any MP, and especially someone from
his party, risks being labelled "a redneck or a hate-monger or homophobic"
if they even mention such views in Parliament.
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- Spencer's pronouncements come at a difficult time for
his party, which is stickhandling a merger with the Progressive Conservative
party.
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- Delegates from both parties are due to vote on a ratification
of the merger Dec. 6.
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- He made his comments during an hour-long interview after
The Vancouver Sun obtained a copy of an e-mail from Spencer to a Canadian
citizen outlining his conspiracy theory. The Sun requested an interview
so Spencer could elaborate on his views.
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- "I'm being very, very free here to talk with you
against all advice probably that I should ever talk to any reporter to
this kind of link," he said near the end of the interview.
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- "But you know I'm feeling very, very deprived, you
know, of my rights in that I cannot say openly -- I dare not say it in
the House of Commons, even -- the full extent of what I really believe
on some of these issues."
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- Spencer said the conspiracy began with a speech by a
U.S. gay rights activist in the 1960s whose name he couldn't recall.
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- "His quote went something like this ... 'We will
seduce your sons in the locker rooms, in the gymnasiums, in the hallways,
in the playgrounds, and on and on, in this land.'
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- "It was quite a long quote stating what was going
to happen to the young boys of North America."
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- Spencer said one of the major steps was to encourage
followers to enter the ministry of various churches and to infiltrate North
America's schools and teaching colleges.
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- "The activists that organized in those days (encouraged)
people of their persuasion to enter into educational fields, and to do
this with the feeling of a mission, you know, of going out there as pioneers
in a -- quote-- human rights area, and I think they were successful as
we've seen."
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- He said those who sympathize with homosexuals in today's
judiciary, educational system, the entertainment industry, and churches
aren't directly linked to the people who launched the conspiracy.
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- "I would think that is so long ago that we're seeing
the outworkings of it decades down the line. And to say there's a conspiracy
now is going to raise eyebrows, and (people will) say, 'Well, I don't think
so. It's just the natural evolution.'
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- "But there are things, like what we're talking about,
that once you set in motion, it's like shoving a snowball off the edge
of the barn roof. Once you set it in motion you don't have to keep pushing.
It sort of keeps going. It's that slippery slope that we talk about."
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- Trudeau, while justice minister, announced sweeping changes
to the Criminal Code in 1967 that included legalizing homosexual acts done
in private involving consenting adults. The bill wasn't passed until 1969,
when the late Trudeau was prime minister.
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- Previously, those convicted of buggery or bestiality
could be sentenced to a maximum 14 years in jail.
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- "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms
of the nation," Trudeau said famously after tabling the bill.
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- Spencer said he wouldn't want homosexuals to ever go
to jail as a result of their "choice" to engage in homosexual
acts.
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- "I wouldn't even suggest that there would be a penalty.
I just think it's so sad that we have to take an issue like this and be
asked to put the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on it without being
allowed to tell the truth and talk about facts."
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- He said one of those "facts" is that homosexuals,
due to AIDS and other health problems, have a far lower life expectancy
than straight men. (A search by The Vancouver Sun's library failed to find
evidence supporting Spencer's statement.)
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- "Let's just say if ... anybody that used Colgate
toothpaste, their life expectancy was lowered by 10, 15 years. What do
you think would happen to Colgate toothpaste? It would be outlawed. Well,
we know that's what happens to men living a gay lifestyle."
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- Spencer said some of his constituents fear the proposed
Alliance-Progressive Conservative merger could make it more difficult for
the merged party to take strong positions on social conservative issues.
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- "It may be more difficult to carry through with
a strong family stand."
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- But he pointed out that most of the Tory caucus voted
with the Alliance in opposing the Liberal government's plan to legalize
same-sex marriage.
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- Spencer said he would welcome gay Tory MP Scott Brison,
who supports the merger, but has voiced concern that the party could be
perceived as socially intolerant, as a caucus colleague.
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- "He's a great guy and he's got a lot of great ideas.
If he can live with us we can live with him."
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- Spencer, 61, was born in Missouri and moved to Canada
in 1974. He became a Canadian citizen in 1999, a year before he narrowly
beat former New Democratic Party MP John Solomon.
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- Among his other comments during the interview:
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- - He said there will soon be strong pushes to legalize
polygamy and pedophilia.
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- "Polygamy is next on the list. More than one (spouse)
... We'll see that within the next very, very few years. Pedophilia is
being pursued as we speak ... Some will say down to an eight-year-old,
they think it's okay."
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- - He said he believes homosexuality, rather than being
part of someone's nature, is something that is developed by young people
who struggle with their identity in relation to a parent, such as an "overbearing
mother" or cold father.
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- - - -
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- In a wide-ranging interview with The Sun's Peter O'Neil,
Canadian Alliance MP Larry Spencer outlined his views and beliefs on homosexuality,
modern mores and the law. Below are excerpts.
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- "At some of those [gay liberation] conventions in
those days [1960s] it was discussed what some of those approaches would
be, and one of the things that's happened is they've infiltrated the education
systems of North America, in particular the education systems that prepare
educational people. In other words, teachers."
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- "We have a number of churches that have begun to
endorse the alternative lifestyle, as they would call it, and that too
came about because, you know, they've been working at this for a long time
and promoting their members to take up ministry, et cetera, et cetera..."
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- "I don't say that they would have said, 'We're all
going to go out here and this is what we're going to do.' He was saying,
'This is inevitable to happen' because for this group of people to express
themselves sexually, they're going to have to do the recruiting and a lot
of the recruiting is going to come illegally. It's going to come by seduction."
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- On what he said to gay MP Svend Robinson at a parliamentary
committee meeting discussing gay marriage:
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- "You had a right to marry. You proved that to us
all sitting here because you were married. Now you are complaining that
you do not have the right to marry. But you do have the right to marry.
You can marry any woman you choose, just like I can marry any woman I chose..."
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- On homosexuality being a "lifestyle choice":
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- "I know another person that I was acquainted with
in Texas. He lived this lifestyle a number of years, overcame that, was
changed, has seven kids and a wife and has totally no inclination or desire
to go back to that. So to say that people do not have a choice or that
it's genetic has not been proven."
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- So, could Svend Robinson make himself straight?
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- "I believe he could. I believe he would struggle
with it. You know, the human body is a magnificent creature, it's a magnificent
machine. Our human bodies can be trained to appreciate . . . and really
enjoy something that would be just miserable to me, i.e. long distance
runners. Our bodies can be trained to, as I say, enjoy certain sensations."
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- Explaining why the conspiracy can draw young people into
homosexuality:
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- "You're being told this is good and normal and that
you shouldn't think that there's anything wrong with it, which is what's
happening to our young people now in our schools. So they start looking
and they start checking and they start experimenting, and this is what
I'm talking about... an orchestrated recruitment plan. So you back it down
to the impressionable and vulnerable and then bring it all the way through
their life, and you know, this is quite understandable how this can happen."
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