JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY ARE THE SAME - A PRO-LIFE CANDIDATE'S CONCERN THAT SOME VOTERS CAN'T TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD ABOUT HIS VIEW BEING PERSONAL ONLY WITH NO BEARING ON LEGISLATION OR POLICY - I AM REMINDED OF THE DAYS WHEN PEOPLE WOULD NOT VOTE FOR A CATHOLIC - I HEARD SOME PRETTY UGLY WORDS ABOUT JOHN KENNEDY WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NEIL MACDONALD IN CBC NEWS



“Andrew Scheer is effectively pro-choice, why not just own it?

"Saying you can keep personal views and political policy separate is a tough sell these days”



It is indeed.

There was a day, not that terribly long ago, when a leader's religious faith would be regarded the same way, as in, "I'll never vote for a Catholic!"

It was as late as John Kennedy’s time in America that serious doubts were publicly expressed about a Catholic being elected as president.

While that kind of strictly religious-based attitude has faded – perhaps reflecting the general decline in traditional religious identity - we may just have had new secular-religious attitudes and intolerances exactly replace them.

We pride ourselves on advancing as a society away from narrowness, but in a very real sense we have not advanced when people can still say the equivalent of “I’ll never vote for a Catholic,” just substituting a new word for Catholic. A word like Pro-life or Pro-choice.