Poilievre's (Straight) Pride Problem

On That Green Shirt

“I'd be crazy not to follow/Follow where you lead”

Why has Pierre Poilievre never said, on camera, that he supports gay marriage?

I could be wrong, but Poilievre voted against gay marriage in 2005, and the only source I’ve ever found where he said that vote was wrong was a 2020 La Presse article where Poilievre calls gay marriage a great success … in French, when he was thinking about running for the Tory leadership and he thought his lane was to Scheer’s left. Now that he’s having to move right, he’s refused – as far as I can tell – to give the denial he gave to La Presse in English, and on camera.

Now, the counter to what I know people will say is that his Dad is gay and his deputy leader’s gay, so of course he’s fine on gay rights issues. That answer will ignore the homophobic leaflet used in Portage-Lisgar, because efforts to give the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt on these issues must not reckon with the fundamental truth – for most Conservatives who support gay rights, they’re not a matter of principle, but of convenience.

Why won’t Pierre repeat in English that he supports gay marriage? Simple – he knows he would pay a price on his right flank, and inside his caucus, if he was ever so direct. And so, he sells the community down the river, leaving his opinion to ambiguity, and then he wonders why homophobes like the asshole in the Straight Pride shirt in Calgary follows where he leads.

Maybe it’s because you want this, until you don’t.

…

Let’s look at this through a slightly less obtuse angle – why does an ardent homophobe want a picture with Pierre Poilievre (and Danielle Smith)? Because this homophobic piece of shit views Poilievre as someone who he should follow, a politician worthy of his support. Presumably, this man would be less likely to support Pierre Poilievre if the vocal support he gave to the cause of marriage equality had been uttered, I don’t know, in a language he can fucking speak.

The sheer cynicism of attempting to pander to social liberals in the Horseshoe and Quebec who worry that the SoCons of his party would have too much control by winking that you’re pro-gay by making Lantsman Deputy but not actually ever saying that she should be allowed to get married is abhorrent, but it’s entirely sensible. What isn’t sensible is that Conservatives think they should receive the benefits of the ambiguity without the downsides.

If Pierre Poilievre would like to end all the ambiguity and stop every Liberal on Twitter from being able to entertain the notion his taking a picture with that fucker was anything other than an accident of bad advance work, then he can do so by getting in front of a camera and definitively saying he supports my right to marry another man. Until he is willing to do that, however, it is fair game to make the point that he is pandering to the votes of homophobes and bigots, which he plainly is.

As someone who can rationalize a lot of things on a moral basis, and as a staunch believer that ends are more important in moral conversations than means, I understand the moral case for Poilievre’s strategic ambiguity. If you are a pro-gay rights Conservative – which I think Poilievre clearly is, after the La Presse interview – then the trade you’re making is that the damage to your integrity and honesty you’re doing in maintaining this ambiguity to win an election is nothing compared to the good you’ll do when in office, beating a government you think is terrible.

None of that should be taken as an endorsement that that view is correct, but if you believe in conservative principles and that this country needs a new PM then it’s very easy to find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of selective intellectual integrity. The problem is, it being worth it is entirely predicated on the idea the Conservatives win in the end, and every time shit like this happens, the gambit the Tories are running runs into the brick wall of reality.

The reason this matters is not because this Straight Pride asshole matters – he is but yet another in a long list of people who have lost the argument in this country against progress and justice. He and the people like him are being replaced with a generation where queerness is so normalized that people barely blink. The argument is lost, but what’s interesting is that the message still works in a few places.

If this really was 5% of the population, Poilievre would go on camera and slap it down repeatedly, because whatever he’d lose to the PPC he’d get back and then some on his left flank. But he’s made his calculation that what he’d lose on his right is worth more than what he’s losing on his left with the ambiguity. It might be right, but it’s not tenable to make a strategic calculation on a moral issue and then be pissed when people view your vacuous position for what it is.

What Poilievre wants is for people like the asshole in the Straight Pride shirt to follow him, but for everyone else to not ask any questions and just ignore the bigots in his party. He wants the benefits of not being an ardent homophobe while not actually pissing off those with ardent and bigoted views. He wants the politician’s equivalent of a week in Vegas eating everything he can and betting on wild and dumb shit without gaining any weight or losing any money. The problem is, he hasn’t earned that.

If Poilievre would like the benefit of the doubt on his credentials on this issue, he can earn it, but his stance on this is emblematic of Conservatism under him. It’s an ideology that wants to be graded on the weakest of curves at all times, because his vision of conservatism falls apart under any form of scrutiny. But we know why he won’t change anything – because he has decided that his main political objective will be to make sure that Straight Pride Shirt Guy would be crazy not to follow where he leads. He just doesn’t want any of the rest of us to notice.