What a painful spectacle to watch. The NDP party managed to discover a private videotape of Tom Lukiwski from approximately 17 years ago in 1991. On the tape Lukiwski who obviously had been drinking with the folks in the office made some politically incorrect remarks about homosexuals. The tape itself was obviously not made for rebroadcast and it appears that somebody was just playing with the damn thing during some beers. The NDP who have in the past gone out of their way to appeal to homosexuals and lesbians for their votes and have and have had elected homosexuals and lesbians decided to release the video. Naturally this caused great embarrassment to Mr. Lukiwski and great outrage from homosexuals and lesbians. He gave a very sincere and heartfelt apology within the House of Commons and outside of it.
But the is going off. Now why is that?
The Liberals want Mr. Lukiwski to resign. The NDP want him to resign although some are satisfied with the apology. To understand this a little more we need to go back to the riding and find out how people voted in the last elections.
I suggest that you go to wikipedia and look up Regina Lumsden Lake Centre You will immediately notice that in the 2006 election the Conservatives got 42% the Liberals 28% and the NDP 27% but if you go back to the 2004 election you see Mr. Lukiwski only narrowly defeated the Liberal candidate by 120 votes, And if you go back further the NDP lost by a hair to the Canadian Alliance and then go back further still and damned if the NDP didn't win that one.
So put your thinking caps on folks. It sure looks to me that there has been a steady decline of the NDP vote since 2000 and the Liberals have displaced them as second in votes. I think the NDP is getting desperate. They had to go back 17 years to find something bad about Mr. Lukiwski and even then it was a private videotape.
The NDP should have either destroyed the tape or given it back to Mr. Lukiwski. What they did was an invasion of privacy and a disgrace. They are the ones that need to apologize here.
Now the words themselves. We say and think things in private that we don't say in public. We think things that we may not even truly believe in. If you took every man that ever looked at a pretty woman and somehow found out what they thought most of them (the men) would be in jail. In the case of homosexuals and lesbians we all know one or more and we may have friends and family members who are gay. At one time in Canada homosexuals were considered to be sexual deviants by most in society. Now things have changed. A recent Stats Can survey of sexual orientation places the actual percentage of homosexuals and lesbians in Canadian society at under 3% but it seems to be more than that when you consider the number of them that you may know personally. In this case Mr. Lukiwski was not only saying the words in a private situation he was also obviously under the influence of Mr. Brewski. It was an off the cuff remark in a particular situation. It wasn't anything you could get away with saying today in a public situation. However in private situations people express themselves differently. The NDP quite unfairly moved the comment to a public forum and then applied today's rules relating to public statements. That's
This is nothing more that the desperate NDP trying to win back votes in Regina Lumsden Lake Centre. They are desperate because of some of the points Bob Rae made in the Commons recently when he completely destroyed them with his oratory. The NDP is desperate because the Green Party of all things is claiming a good percentage of their constituency. They have a weak leader "Taliban Jack" Layton and NDP'ers are worried they will loose support in the next election.
Now surprisingly the media is not picking up on this. They seem content to apply time on the salacious content of the 17 year old words and the outrage of homosexuals and lesbians to those words. That surprises me a bit because some of these folks in the media are pretty sharp and would normally be expected to pick up on something like this. Maybe they are stuck in the politically correct trap too.
Just because we tolerate a group in society does not mean we embrace their approach to life. It does not mean that we can't have our private thoughts and express ourselves. Like many, I know some homosexuals and lesbians. I jokingly refer to myself as a lesbian (because I like women). I have worked with them and as human beings they are as good as the next person. But being a small minority with often outrageous behavior as displayed in gay pride parades, cross dressing etc it seems to me that these types of comments as made by this MP prior to when he was elected 17 years ago are not something to get too upset about. Because you are being sucked right into the NDP's clumsy and inappropriate and desperate attempt to gain votes.
I suppose we all have our challenges in Life. I hope that MP Tom Lukiwski realizes that there are many who while not agreeing that those words should be public also understand that context that they were given and the fact that the video was in fact a private video and non of the public's business. If all the straight people that had made an off colour remark against one of the groups in our society had those remarks made public and measured against the allowable things one can say in Canada millions of us would face sanction and possibly loss of careers and even jail time!
That's my story and I am sticking to it! I think MP Tom Lukiwski has more than paid for his words and the entire stupid situation orchestrated by the slimy NDP should be dropped.