Tory pro gay leader

Tuesday September 21, 2004
Homosexual Activists Cheer New Pro-Gay Marriage Ontario Conservative Leader

TORONTO, September 21, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A homosexual activist group was quick to send kudos to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party after the election of John Tory as its new Leader. The Globe and Mail reports that Egale Canada, the principal activist group behind homosexual 'marriage', "thanked the Ontario Progressive Conservatives for choosing a leader who supports their cause."

Tory, who supports abortion and homosexual 'marriage', was running against two candidates who support traditional marriage and describe themselves as pro-life, Jim Flaherty and Frank Klees. On the second ballot, Flaherty received 14,353 votes or 4664.14 electoral votes to Tory's 18,037 votes or 5390.86 electoral votes.

Tory was the candidate of Toronto, sweeping most Toronto ridings with 75-80% of the vote. Even the rabidly liberal Toronto Star newspaper had given Tory its strong endorsement. However, much of rural Ontario rejected the big-city candidate. An analysis of the results show that Tory's overwhelming support in the Toronto area more than compensated for the strength of Flaherty and Klees in small town Ontario.

Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) urged pro-lifers within the Conservative party to vote for some combination of Flaherty and Klees. Thousands of CLC supporters who were members of the Conservative Party voted for either of the pro-life candidates. Due to the preferential ballot system the pro-life vote was not split. Over 75% of pro-lifers in the PC Party turned out to vote, much better than the 50% turnout for the Party generally. Unfortunately, not enough pro-life Ontarians took out a membership in time to vote in the leadership contest.

CLC President Jim Hughes was pleased with the turnout. "A lot of good people took their responsibilities seriously and they now see it is possible to challenge contenders in all these nomination meetings and we look forward to the next one," Hughes told LifeSiteNews.com. "Congratulations, to all those who got involved."

National Post columnist Andrew Coyne compared the selection of Tory to that of former PC Leader Ernie Eves. Commenting first on the election of the left-leaning Eves, Coyne said "This won (the party) praise from the Liberal press, and not much else: the party went down to a crushing defeat at the next election." He continued with reference to Tory, "What lesson did the party learn from this? That it should repeat the experiment. Hence its present choice of leader, the second straight to be endorsed by the Toronto Star."

Tory was reportedly lurching left (to the so-called center) just after the end of the race. However, Flaherty cautioned, "We have to be careful about that because if we look at the results today you see that on the first ballot more than half the party supported the candidates that were talking about conservative traditional principles and values."

See the Globe and Mail coverage
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/A
rticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040920/TORIES20
/TPNational/?query=john+tory
See Andrew Coyne's column
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalp
ost/news/story.html?id=e2c464b6-c754-444
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