Tory leadership hopeful vows to ‘never’ attend Pride and claims families are ‘under attack’
A Conservative leadership hopeful in Canada has pledged to “never” attend a Pride event.
Brad Trost is one of the hopefuls vying to replace former Prime Minister Stephen Harper as leader of the Tory Party.
The politician, an ultra-conservative MP for Saskatoon, is one of 14 leadership candidates vying to lead the right-wing party, which is currently the official opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, pictured:
In fundraising emails this week ahead of the May election, Mr Trost wrote: “I have not marched in any ‘gay pride’ parade. Further, I will NOT march in any ‘gay pride’ parade as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, nor will I march in or FUND any ‘gay pride’ event of any kind as prime minister.”
The fundraising email apparently included pictures of multiple other Conservative candidates standing in the leadership election marching under rainbow banners at Pride events.
In a video, Mr Trost’s campaign manager Mike Patton added: “In case you haven’t noticed, Brad is not entirely comfortable with the whole gay thing… Brad is not a big fan of the gay lifestyle.
“What you do in private is your business, but what you literally do in the middle of the street needs to conform to some basic community standards.”
He continued to brand Pride events “inappropriate for public viewing”.
Meanwhile, the Trost campaign website claims that “families across Canada are under attack”, citing a string of LGBT policies.
It states: “Ontario’s legislature just passed Bill 28 replacing ‘mother’ and ‘father’, with ‘parent’ and ‘birth parent’ when registering births. Children can now have up to FOUR ‘parents’ registered.
“If passed, Bill 89 will redefine best interests of the child in Ontario family law to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ as factors to be considered in custody cases. This will make it much easier to remove children of devout parents from their homes, especially if their parents reject theories of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity’.”
He adds: “As a father, I oppose this elitist assault on the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit. Government should respect and support parents, not undermine their rights. As Leader of the federal Conservative Party, I will push for measures to uphold the parental rights of ALL Canadians.”
Mr Trost argued unsuccessfully at the 2016 Conservative policy convention to retain the party’s definition of marriage as “the Union of one man and one woman”.
