Making Amends

Isn't it the truth, how our emotionally and socially immature behaviour can come back to haunt us, managing to creep up when we least expect it, to cause immense embarrassment, and sincere attempts to explain how we're different now; just not the same person at all. So, please...forgive. Ah, but when you're in public office and are scrutinized with the fine tooth-comb of critical appraisals because you're supposed to set an example, and you've erred; look out, fella.

And so it is for poor Tom Lukiwsky, whom the the NDP revealed to have been incautiously discriminatory against a hard-done-by minority group - seventeen years ago, when he perhaps should have known better, but obviously did not. But then, under certain circumstances, things happen, despite our not really willing them to. As a backroom Conservative apparatchik in Saskatchewan, during an informal party pre-election wait for their candidate, Mr. Lukiwski distinguished himself.

Video camera rolling, party mood in full swing, beer in hand, he expounded on the difference between an "A" type and a "B" type. He personally exemplified the "A" type, while the "B" type were "faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases". Oops, shouldn't have said that, let alone thought it, right? Obviously. But don't people, in the throes of boozy companionship, come out with the damnedest things...?

Personally, I never harboured any ill will for gays, simply thought them gaily peculiar. That changed, radically, when our own children, as teen-agers thirty years ago, brought home their own feelings of acceptance, inclusion, and compassion to the subject. As for Mr. Lukiwski, once the heat hit the ceiling fan in the revelation of his too-relaxed musings in which he more or less expressed the zeitgeist of the times, he was truly anguished.

As a Member of Parliament, acting as parliamentary secretary and official government spokesperson to House leader Peter Van Loan, this wizened-with-age party talk caused him no little soul-searching. He apologized, fulsomely, to the electorate, to the House of Commons, to his wife, his children.

Above all, one would imagine, to his children. "I deeply regret and I have deep remorse for my words of 17 years ago, but I can assure you ... that I will spend the rest of my life, my career ... trying to make up for those shameless comments."

There is no doubting his sincere remorse, nor his disavowal of the comments made by a callow, shallow man whom time has granted the grace of deeper reflection. Because, the fact is, 17 years ago, the kind of remark he loosed tipsily at that little party brought no hushed response of mild rebuke from the other partyers; his dismissive censure of gays was an example of a widely accepted and prevalent social attitude.

It's only in the last ten years, in Canada, that gays and lesbians and the transgendered have been placed in the safe embrace of the Constitution, guaranteeing protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation. No longer is it feasible or legally possible that homophobes can unleash their distaste for homosexuals freely through public discourse. It's unlawful to preach or spread hatred against an identifiable group.

And where discrimination against those whose sexual orientation went against the social grain of acceptability suffered one type of disgraceful dismissal of their human rights after another, that is no longer the case. Brutality against gays does, sometimes occur now, just as it does against any minority group at the hands of hate-mongers and thugs in society.

But whereas once it was a common occurrence which society and public safety and security authorities once shrugged off, that too is no longer the case. This is a different world. Gay pride and the relaxation of social attitudes and mores recognizing diversity in individuals orientating differently than the considered norm has encouraged hitherto shamed and hidden gays to present themselves as normal but different.

So when the Liberal party and the NDP shrilly demand that the government act swiftly and decisively to discipline a 17-years-older and wiser man for a stupidly indiscretionary statement hateful of a minority most of society did not understand, this takes things a trifle too far. He has been punished. His stature in the apprehension of his children has been diminished. The regard with which his fellow parliamentarians hold him has been somewhat smudged.

Perhaps they recognize themselves in his unfortunate plight. For none of us, and none of them is without some kind of discriminatory fault. We all err, and we all mature, and we all learn from our earlier errors. When we realize that our earlier understanding was stained by a prevailing social stigma attached to a minority undeserving of the censure, if we're to respect ourselves, we're amenable to change.

If it weren't for the highly partisan atmosphere in the House of Commons where the Liberals and the NDP have made a high priority of searching out Conservative vulnerabilities, rather than work together for the common weal to address matters of real value and interest to Canadians, this unfortunate slip of one man's fall from reasoned compassion, however temporary, would never have seen the light of censure.

Sanctimony is brother to hypocrisy.