The official Canadian government travel website has a new warning affixed to its section on the United States.
“Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons,” it asserts.
“Check relevant state and local laws.”
No specific law, policy or even state is named; the reader must just take for granted that somewhere, somehow, Uncle Sam is endangering or rolling back the rights of the LGBT community.
(Which in Canada falls under a bigger umbrella: The government says 2S, “at the front, recognizes Two-Spirit people as the first 2SLGBTQI+ communities.”)
Gratuitous gossip has never endeared anyone to his neighbors.
This pernicious bit of editorializing masked as a safety measure is a textbook example of the progressive instinct to avoid uncomfortable debates through unwarranted smears.
Instead of coming to grips with the fact that not everyone on the globe must agree with the position favored by gender-studies students on every conceivable social issue, some professional virtue signaler taking the cue of his prime minister has rushed to mischaracterize the “incorrect” view.
And, of course, worked the refs to deem it harmful so as to elide the merits of any reasonable debate that could be had.
Never mind that it’s patently absurd to suggest that there are statutes in the United States rendering it a dangerous — or even uncomfortable — place for LGBT people to live or visit.
A reminder for those who desperately need one: Gay marriage is legal in all 50 states.
Adults are free to do whatever they want with their own bodies.
Oh, and the supposedly right-wing bogeyman of a Supreme Court has declared that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected categories under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The United States isn’t a bastion of hate — it’s a worldwide model for tolerance of diverse people and viewpoints.
That’s the problem.
Whichever stiff Canuck signed off on the advisory doesn’t genuinely believe that the Stars and Stripes pose a threat to LGBT people.
He’s just upset that America protects the rights of people he doesn’t like as well as people he does.
By and large, what conservative legislators across the country are trying to do is protect children from making irreversible choices and ensure the preservation of conscience rights, not discriminate against or make anyone’s life harder.
No doubt there are some exceptions.
And obviously there are isolated examples of hateful people spewing venom and even committing heinous crimes here in the States.
But those same kinds of examples can be found across the world, including in Canada.
A report compiling police data in the true north, strong and not-so-free, shows there was a 64% increase in hate crimes against Canadians for their sexual orientation in 2021 and a 27% increase in hate crimes overall.
To issue a travel advisory on that basis would strike most as hysterical.
But if we were really going to put the shoe on the other foot, America could easily issue a similar advisory for those suffering from depression or other serious mental illnesses based on Canada’s permissive assisted-suicide laws.
Those laws, and the culture that allowed them to pass, constitute a far more serious threat to a vulnerable group’s happiness and well-being than any legislation in the United States.
But it’s preferable to explain why Canada giving in to the worst instincts of its suffering citizens is the wrong approach, rather than trying to keep people from visiting Montreal.
Because the best way to change hearts and minds isn’t laundered fear-mongering but the open debate so many progressives fear.
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.
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