The Toronto SUN has always been consistently, hatefully homophobic. And veteran anti-gay activist Christina Blizzard, who doubles as a SUN journalist, has been in the forefront of the lynch mob for at least 20 years, disgracing herself yet again earlier this week.
In 1993, Blizzard campaigned against grants for two Toronto gay cultural groups, suggesting that all they wanted to do was run orgies and host a strip club.
She was in congenial company back then, of course. Colleague Peter Worthington was another mouthy gay-hater, while arch-homophobe Claire Hoy outdid them all, slobbering on December 25, 1977 that “kids, not rights, is their craving.”
But not much has really changed at the SUN since. In 2010, they gay-baited mayoral candidate George Smitherman with the front-page question, “Too Gay?” And with the ascension of Kathleen Wynne as the first lesbian premier of Ontario, the SUN team once again trundled out the turd-cannons. The first shot came from Mike Strobel, suggesting that she would run “screaming back to men” once the SUN’s journos get back to work.
But this is 2013. What was once marginalized is now mainstream—and vice-versa. Strobel’s comment disappeared into the memory-hole. Too obvious. These days you need a more oblique approach.
Blizzard, with her years of experience, has become more sophisticated than she was in 1993. Her opening salvo was simply to belittle the new premier. After hypocritically sneering at a mere radio journo for asking about Wynne’s fashion sense, she proceeded to write an entire column on it herself. Wynne is now a “giddy, girly butterfly.” Who knew? But it doesn’t matter at the SUN. If it demeans, it leads.
Then the SUN got a really big fish on the line. Benjamin Levin, a professor at OISE and a former Wynne advisor on education policy when she was Minister of Education, was arrested on a number of child porn charges. The contamination game was on.
Note, first of all, the picture at the link. It shows Levin sitting side-by-side with Justin Trudeau and Wynne at this year’s Gay Pride parade. Too perfect! Trudeau has already been the target of ceaseless dogwhistles—one thinks of the bilious Terry Glavin’s description of him as “strangely pretty,” and an “insufferably foppish celebrity drama queen,” or former bathhouse-raiding cop Julian Fantino’s desire to “expose him for what he is: a drama teacher,” or PMO flack Erica Meekes’ reference to an “in-house yoga studio” at a hotel Trudeau was staying at.
Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Meanwhile the effete and precious Trudeau decked an oafish Senator who had a black belt in karate. Fun to see the stereotypes go down in the third round.
Wynne, however, is all what-you-see-is-what-you-get, so sly, malicious suggestions won’t work: only a full smear will do.
Levin walked with Wynne, former federal Liberal leader Bob Rae and current leader Justin Trudeau at the recent Gay Pride Parade, so this is a person with political connections.
Moving on directly from A to Z:
[I]t does raise disturbing questions in general about the way education policy is formulated and who has input.
Remember the uproar in 2010 over the new sex-education curriculum?….This curriculum was developed at a time when Levin was a deputy minister.
With Blizzard so far? OK:
[Re the curriculum] the deputy minister would have input into which groups were “consulted.”
Wynne was education minister at the time.
Aha! said Pooh.
The curriculum aimed to teach 11-year-olds about oral and anal sex, and eight-year-olds about sexual orientation and identity.
After Laurel Broten took over at the helm of education, the sex-ed curriculum quietly died.
One of the first questions Wynne was asked the day after she won the Liberal leadership was when she’d bring it back. She’s under pressure from the gay community on that score.
…Wynne is vacationing at her cottage this week and while she issued a statement on Toronto’s storm, there’s been radio silence on Levin. [emphasis added]
And then:
She needs to make a statement clearing the air.
Umm…what?
Connect the dots, says Blizzard, her ink-drops still wet. Wynne. Lesbian. Sex education. Kids. An accused pedophile, “advising” her on curriculum. Gay Pride Day. Liberals. Trudeau.
“Our children are our most precious people,” she reminds us. As did Claire Hoy back in 1977, warning that gay rights were all about “getting their prophets into the schools and spreading their seamy message to young impressionable kids.”
Nearly four decades of unremitting hate, as the world around them gets pinker and pinker. At least you’ve got to give the SUN, and Christina Blizzard, credit for staying power.
