Well, this is getting bizarre! Wednesday’s silly little story about the Alberta government defining same-sex couples as “benefit partners” instead of “spouses” in their employee benefit plan is causing more of a stir than expected.

Same-sex marriage is a legal reality in Canada, but Alberta’s gay government workers are being categorized differently. It should be a no-brainer to remedy this and move on—or so you’d think.

Lloyd Snelgrove, an Alberta cabinet minister and president of the treasury board, is continuing to defend the separate-but-equal treatment in the benefit plan, saying that the government’s benefit plan shouldn’t be used to “drive social change” and that anyone who has a problem with it should go to the Human Rights Commission instead of the plan’s source.

“Drive social change?” Same-sex marriage has been legal in Alberta since 2005; the change already happened. Surely this is just a matter of updating the books to keep consistent. But even Alberta’s premier, Ed Stelmach, has now come out against calling same-sex spouses “spouses” in the plan: “The benefits are the same,” he said during Wednesday’s question period, “and that’s the most important thing.”

It’s true: The benefits are the same—just like the water that leads to separate drinking fountains come from the same pipes, but something’s still not right. It’s a cliché, but one apparently requires repeating: Separate but equal is not equal. The Alberta government should just acknowledge reality, update the darn plan, and move on to something more important.

• Union asks Alberta to include same-sex marriages in spouse definition [CBC News]
• Former Alberta government employee mulls complaint over definition of “spouse” [Canadian Press]

Alberta is the only province in Canada that does not explicitly include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation in its human rights code. This, despite a ten-year-old Supreme Court ruling stating that provinces must not exclude gays and lesbians from their human rights legislations.

Rachel Notley, an Alberta MLA, has now brought the matter up in the legislature, calling out the government for its embarrassingly slow response to the court ruling. “Why,” she asked, “does the government continue to give a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to homophobes and gay-bashers by refusing to include sexual orientation in our human rights code?”

Great question, Rachel.

Just last year, Premier Ed Stelmach said that the human rights code would not be updated to include sexual orientation in that legislative session, calling the process “complicated.”  Now, Lindsay Blackett, the Minister responsible for the human rights code and the first black cabinet minister in Alberta, has said the same thing for this legislative session, announcing that updating the human rights code would be a “knee-jerk response:”

We do not make changes to legislation… or make amendments to any particular body just because of the whim of one particular individual in this House.

I guess avoiding a knee-jerk response justifies a plain ol’ jerk response. Isn’t politics just the classiest?

Here’s the thing: this issue is not just the wishes of one lone MLA—it’s the wishes of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Alberta has no excuse for letting this go unattended since 1999, when Rosie O’Donnell hosted the Grammys that debuted Ricky Martin—and only one of them was suspected of being gay.

So, yeah, if updating the human rights code is truly complicated and requires cascading updates, then say so—say unabashedly that it was a mistake to ignore it, that you’re on the case now, and that it will be in place soon. But, frankly, I don’t think it’s complicated, especially since the courts must already interpret the human rights code as if sexual orientation were present. Alberta has a long history of institutionalized homophobia by the government, and dragging their feet on updating the human rights code—while continuing to introduce homophobic legislation—gives me reason to suspect that they’re just being… What’s the most recognizable word for it?

Let’s say: “Alberta-governmenty.”

• Alberta accused of ignoring gay rights [Edmonton SUN]
• MLA wants gay rights protected [iNews 880]

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has announced that he will not bring Alberta’s Human Rights code up to date with the rest Canada this legislative session.

Alberta is currently the only Canadian province that doesn’t include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation in its human rights code. While Stelmach told the Calgary SUN that adding these protections is “one of several issues under review” for future sessions, he offered no timeline or hints of priority, saying the changes would not be simple.

Unsurprisingly, The SUN appears somewhat indifferent, declaring that protections in Alberta’s human rights code is merely “symbolic” anyway, since “federal law has protected people on the basis of sexual orientation for a decade.”

Having lived in Alberta for 26 years before I moved somewhere more compatible, I wouldn’t say that’s accurate. It has been illegal to, say, fire an employee because of sexual orientation for about a decade, but Alberta had taken special measures to ensure that gay people were not treated equally under the law much later than that.

Until 2005, Alberta had over-ridden Canada’s Charter of Rights using the obscure notwithstanding clause to introduce an otherwise unconstitutional law banning same-sex marriage. In 2006, Tory backbencher Ted Morton introduced an unconstitutional bill that would have required that school teachers not discuss any gay topics without first issuing parental permission slips, and would have allowed civil marriage commissioners to refuse their public services to gay couples. (That bill was only defeated through procedural tactics by the opposition, and otherwise had majority support.) Also, until just last year, Alberta same-sex couples were not equally eligible for adoption through government agencies as opposite-sex couples and single people in the province.

So, while Alberta may have issued the very basics of legal protections for gay people, this does not make a proper human rights code moot. Alberta is dead last, as usual, in recognising the rights of its citizens equally, and they’re shuffling their feet on correcting it.

Update: Nick, an aspiring lawyer in Ottawa, wrote in to say that the Supreme Court has previously “read in” protections based on sexual orientation into Alberta’s constitution, making it true that an explicit protection would be mostly symbolic—at least as far as the courts are concerned. That said, Alberta’s lawmakers are clearly oblivious to this, and until proper recognition is afforded in the document itself, they’ll continue their push for unconstitutional laws. (Ted Morton has vowed to re-introduce his failed “parental warning” bill, for example. What a guy!)

• Gays press province for inclusion in human-rights code [Calgary SUN]

Concerned Christians Canada, an Alberta-based Christian lobby group, has announced that they will launch a human rights complaint against the Alberta Tories.

The complaint stems from the rejection of a Tory candidate’s nomination back in November. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach failed to endorse Craig Chandler’s candidacy due to a history of anti-gay human rights violations. Concerned Christians Canada is furious with Chandler’s rejection, accusing the Stelmach government of anti-Christian discrimination.

So, refusing to endorse a bigot amounts to… bigotry?

Lobby chairman Jim Blake called it just that, adding that Stelmach’s actions were “reflective of wartime Germany,” and that it’s all part of a growing initiative to repress Christians:

It’s definitely anti-Christian bigotry. We’re concerned about a growing trend of anti-Christian behaviour in politics and society at large.

If this was done over someone being Muslim or homosexual, there’d be a huge outcry, a riot.

Well, I have to agree with one point: If someone’s nomination were rejected simply because they were Muslim or gay, there would be an outcry.

However, Chandler was not rejected simply for being Christian; if that were true, most of the MLAs in Stelmach’s government wouldn’t be there today either. Chandler was rejected because he repeatedly infringed upon the human rights of gay people. Having been raised Catholic, I’d argue that such views are decidedly non-Christian.

Blake’s faulty justifications aside, this human rights case doesn’t have a hope of succeeding. Human rights statutes prohibit discrimination in services that are commonly available to the public. Having your candidacy rejected because you don’t represent the views of the political party to which you applied does not fall in that category.

Concerned Christians Canada knows that this case is destined to fail, though. Their HRC complaint is a publicity attempt that will gain additional attention once their case fails. At that point, they’ll accuse the commission of having a bias toward gay and Muslim groups and present their failure as a flawed case study in their campaign to have the HRC abolished.

‘Cause opposing human rights is exactly what Jesus would do, apparently.

• Christian group accuses Tories of bigotry [Calgary SUN]
• Religious Group Plans Human Rights Case Against Stelmach, Tories [AM 770 CHQR]

It’s official. Craig Chandler, Tory nominee for Calgary-Egmont, has had his candidacy rejected by Premer Ed Stelmach over anti-gay human rights violations.

Undeterred, Chandler vows to run as an independent.

And with that, an Alberta tory has been ousted over anti-gay views. Do do do do do do do do…

(That was supposed to be the theme to the Twilight Zone.)

• Alberta Tory denied provincial nomination [CBC News]
• Tory linked to anti-gay letter denied nomination [CTV News]
• Anti-gay letter broke human-rights law, panel says [Globe and Mail]

Can I hear a “Whaaaa?”

Alberta’s Conservative Premier, Ed Stelmach, is reviewing a party candidate’s nomination over anti-gay remarks.

Craig Chandler, who won the Calgary nomination of Calgary-Egmont this month, was sanctioned by the Human Rights Commission in January over a hateful, anti-gay letter published on his website and by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council for a libelous tirade against a gay man on his radio program.

Still, something’s askew. For those of you unfamiliar with Alberta politics, being reviewed by the provincial Conservative party for anti-gay remarks is pretty darn odd. Just last year, a private member’s bill that would have permitted civil marriage commissioners to deny their public services to gays and forced teachers to send out parental warnings before acknowledging the existence of same-sex marriage was defeated only through strategic means. Stelmach even awarded the private member that introduced the bill a cabinet position.

Now, I know things have changed in Alberta since the King Ralph days, but am I the only one that thinks this review could potentially amount to martyrdom?

Mind you, I suspect Ed simply wants to strategically distance himself further from Chandler’s potentially party-harming views. I’d certainly still be reeling from what Chandler wrote on his official political blog back in August: “To those of you who have come to our great land from out of province, you need to remember that you came here to our home and we vote conservative. [...] This is our home and if you wish to live here, you must adapt to our rules and our voting patterns, or leave.”

• Stelmach to review candidate who spoke out about gays [Calgary SUN]