Pro-family group blasts Vancouver city council for tax-funded gay activist trip to Sochi Olympics
VANCOUVER, February 6, 2014 – REAL Women of Canada has blasted the Vancouver City Council for using taxpayers' money to send the city's deputy mayor to the Sochi Winter Olympics to lobby for "gay rights."
"It is unacceptable that the Vancouver City Council has forced the taxpayers to fund an expensive ($100,000 plus) junket for veteran gay activist Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson to lobby the International Olympic Committee in Russia. His objective is to impose what he calls Canada's ‘social revolution’ on the rest of the world," said Gwendolyn Landolt, National Vice-President of REAL Women of Canada, in the statement.
Vancouver Deputy Mayor Tim Stevenson
She explained that homosexual special interest groups want “sexual orientation” explicitly included in the IOC Charter.
"But the Charter already recognizes that 'Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind, in the Olympic spirit,’" Landolt pointed out. "This is not inclusive enough for aggressive gay activism, especially if activists can obtain tax dollars to push their interests.”
Stevenson told the homosexual news service Daily Xtra that a February 3rd meeting with IOC executive office head Jochen Färber in Sochi gave him the impression that "they fully intended to listen to us and enter into a very broad conversation covering all the issues that we had.”
“But what we were most concerned with was to change their bloody charter," said Stevenson.
"Their charter does not mention sexual orientation, and I know they say, ‘Well, it’s covered by this all-inclusive discrimination,’ but I don’t agree, and my community doesn’t agree. And they’re saying, ‘Right,’ and they’re dealing with that,” Stevenson added.
However, Landolt characterized this as "just another attention seeking ploy to further a controversial political agenda, an attempt to impose special interest concerns on countries such as Russia whose policy priorities highlight the family."
She stressed that the Russian law protecting minors from homosexual propaganda has the support of its population and over one hundred international human rights groups, as well as conforming with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State."
"The Russian law is in complete conformity with UN policy, contrary to the protestations of some western activists," Landolt said, adding that the UN has consistently rejected the term “sexual orientation” in its documents because it would diminish the universal coverage of human rights by highlighting one specific interest group.
During a February 3rd press conference in Sochi, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach reiterated that the Russian law banning homosexual propaganda aimed at minors would not impact the games.
Bach stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin assured him that athletes and visitors will not face any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and that the IOC charter already states that discrimination "on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or other otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement."
"The IOC has made it very clear. We stand against any form of discrimination," Bach said, according to an AP report.
To a question asking whether the charter could be amended to include sexual orientation, Bach stated that the language in place already covers this.
"Sexual orientation is included in the charter — whether you name it expressly or not is more symbolic an issue," he said. "It doesn't change the legal quality."
REAL Women of Canada concluded that taxpayers "rightly object to their tax dollars funding unnecessary and redundant special interest lobbying for ‘rights’ which these activists already have."
Contact info:
Gregor Robertson, Mayor
3rd Floor, City Hall
453 West 12th Ave
Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4
Phone: 604-873-7621
Email: gregor.robertson@vancouver.ca
3rd Floor, City Hall
453 West 12th Ave
Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4
Phone: 604-873-7621
Email: gregor.robertson@vancouver.ca
Mayor and Council as a group
Email: mayorandcouncil@vancouver.ca
Email: mayorandcouncil@vancouver.ca
