for the woman who had her husband phone

This morning after the Culture Wars segment of the John Oakley show (audio clips below), I did what every talk show panelist does too often: I thought of all the things I should have said. Charles McVety and I were well into a heated conversation on the topic of the day, whether or not Canada’s national anthem should be revised to neutralize its gender preference. A group of weighty women – author Margaret Atwood, former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, Senator Nancy Ruth, to name a few – had, overnight, launched their website and Facebook Page and sent out eagerly devoured press releases urging the Prime Minister to “restore” the intent of the original language of the song. Edited to its current “in all thy sons command”, the phrase had originally been “thou dost in us command”.  The group is arguing that the original wording was more inclusive and they are challenging the Prime Minister to hold to his throne speech promise to “restore” the original intent. I had, before the show even went to air, visited the newly launched Facebook Page and challenged the Restore Our Anthem group to revise* all* the language in the anthem that recognized the participation and perspectives of only segments of the population.  Not only does the “sons” phrase preclude celebration of the contributions of women, the “God, keep our land” line – itself not part of the original version but changed, ostensibly, to reduce the repetitive “we stand on guard” – imposes respect creep on all who do not profess belief in a divine deity, that is, forces those who do not hold such a belief to honour it if they’re going to sing our national anthem. Isn’t that a little bit much to demand? My argument is that if you’re going to go to the trouble to change the wording to be inclusive or to represent original intent, go to all the trouble, not just a sliver of it. After all, the theistic wording wasn’t added until 1980 when the song was officially recognized as the national anthem. I realized immediately, that I was going to be walking on the nasty side of the revered CBC personality Michael Enright who wishes we atheists would just “shut up”.  Perhaps he would like to tell Ms. Atwood to do the same since women’s rights must seem so yesterday to him. After all, it’s how many years since we got the vote? Ninety-five? No, wait, that didn’t include Quebec. Women in Quebec were only recognized as human beings and “given” the right to vote in 1940. Mr. McVety quickly threw aspersions upon one of the women who is behind the Restore Our Anthem movement, Ms. Ruth, raising the spectre of her tremendous wealth to ridicule her claim as though Mr. McVety, himself, doesn’t pander to the pocketbooks of the wealthy when they support his views and pet projects. He then took aim at what he claimed was my apparent desire to ignore our history – which, according to him, is sacrosanct – and the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our great country was built. Nevermind that neither the word “god” nor any reference to the god, God, appears in the British North America Act crafted by the Fathers of Confederation in 1867; nevermind that Prime Minister Trudeau, under whom our current Constitution was created and affirmed into law, believed God didn’t “give a damn” about the Constitution and agreed to the deference being inserted into the preamble only to appease those in the House who supported and catered to the Christian right; nevermind that it is not the documents drafted by the Fathers of Confederation that protect the freedoms Mr. McVety argues make Canada the greatest country in the world but the very document, the application of which he so often vilifies – our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mr. McVety’s sacrosanct history is riddled with a cut and paste revision of his own artistry. But I digress from my original purpose – setting down in print the response I should have made to John in Uxbridge, the gentleman who called in at his wife’s behest who, he told us, wondered why I didn’t “do something useful” with my time. Here’s my response: I am doing something useful with my time, the hubris of blog-writing notwithstanding. In fact, I consider my time very well spent because I am engaged in some of the hardest work done in our world today. Not physically challenging, that’s true; I’m very lucky to be able to spend much of my day sitting with my computer on my lap and the view of a green, lush garden before me. But what I do, working to combat ignorance in our religious institutions, in society at large, and in our world in general, is a never-ending challenge and never-ending challenges are debilitating, exhausting, and for the most part, thankless. Not that I’m complaining; meaningful work is one of the most important factors leading to well-being and I find my work endlessly meaningful. Add to that the privilege I feel knowing that I walk in the company of an extraordinary group of people, undertaking this struggle against ignorance just as women, so many decades ago, struggled to be recognized as human beings; just as blacks, more recently, resisted the powers that were in place to claim that same “privilege” as a right; just as same sex couples have pressed for the right to publicly celebrate their love in ways that extended the same rights to them as are extended to heterosexual couples; and just as the Onkwehonwe people continue to press for the recognition of their sovereignty by the sovereign nation that keeps acting as though it never signed any treaties. Pressing against the odious wall of ignorance, too often used, as it is, to shield and protect the status quo, is a dreadfully challenging undertaking and I appreciate every ounce of strength that joins me in that work, even and especially when it is my own protected status quo being challenged. But, obviously, there is more hard work to do.  If John in Uxbridge’s wife felt she couldn’t pick the phone up and make her own comments on the air, we haven’t finished the job; obviously, although she doesn’t know it, I’m working for her. There is not yet any cause for celebration.  We’re still dragging around behind us the old worldview that gives men more power and privilege than women and it continues to slow us down. Not only that, we’re still hurting people as the long shadow of history’s gender-based oppression casts its cold darkness over little girls being taught that looking like Barbie or the new, fashionably distorted My Little Pony Equestria girl are the most important tricks they can master. Our status quo is slipping, tragically, toward forgetting the gains women once suffered to make and relegating them to the historical archives, a place Mr. McVety only visits when it suits his purposes and, even then, often misreads. We’re still assuming that any challenge to the status quo (which, for your information, Mr. Enright, assumes and privileges a theistic worldview: why else do we still have the “god” word in the preamble to the Constitution?) is wrongheaded, mean-spirited, and petty. Go ahead. Think that if you must. But I will keep on with my work, spending my time championing the greater truths we have yet to embrace as I discover them myself and bracing my energies against the great wall of ignorance that, at any moment, threatens to crush us all.  The following are the audio clips of the entire show.  Enjoy!