Just because Harper opposes gay marriage doesn't mean that a House with him as Prime Minister would: Jack Layton also made this logical error, conflating Harper with his MPs, during the debate. (As an aside to Mr. Layton, if you want party discipline to control everything, as you seemed to suggest by your comments on "social progressivity" being a core part of the NDP, shouldn't we just get rid of the whole messy electing MPs thing and just vote for which party leader(s) we like best? At least that way, you'd know what you were getting, and we could save a whole lot of money on salaries and running Parliament, in order to pay for your agenda.)

This is the exact same mistake that the majority of political commentators who talk about how scary Stephen Harper allegedly is, because some of his MPs are loose cannons without the wit (at least, from a getting-elected point of view) to take a deep gulp of some nice frosty STFU during the campaign, and that thus a government led by Harper would roll back all sorts of things. Well, no, it ain't that simple: a Harper-led government would roll back all sorts of things if the House agreed in free votes on private members' bills, when they're not part of the party platform.

Guess what — that's exactly the same stance that Paul Martin claims to have, except that he hasn't come out and acknowledged the inherent contradiction in his simultaneous dedication to free votes and private members' bills (part of that agenda to tackle the "democratic deficit" — remember that?) and his stated support for gay rights, abortion on demand, and the like. There are only two possibilities, either Martin'll let a private members' bill to (say) prevent gay marriage through, or he'll go back on his oh-so-vaunted commitment to greater power for backbench MPs (who, in the Liberal Party, are by no means necessarily socially progressive): which will it be, Mr. Martin, which will it be?

Harper's at least acknowledged this conundrum and dealt with it by sticking by the principle of greater participation by MPs. His government will not introduce legislation on abortion or gay marriage: that's up to MPs, from any party, to do. His government will also not take a stance on such legislation. He, personally, takes the stance that gay marriage ought not to be permitted (a stance with which I disagree, but mainly on the grounds that the government ought not to be involved in marriage at all, provided at least two persons consent) , but if he happened to lose those particular votes, then he'd suck it up and implement the laws that passed the House. Sheesh. It's not that hard to understand, people.

As Andrew Coyne summed it up,

When Mr. Harper says his party takes no position on abortion or gay marriage or capital punishment, he is accused of being "unclear." But he hasn't been unclear; he's been crystal clear, albeit in stating a nullity -- the party has no position. When an individual MP puts forward his view, he isn't contradicting the party's position, since there is no position to contradict.

Indeed, since, so far as the party has a position, it is that individual MPs, not parties, should decide these matters -- i.e. in a free vote in the Commons -- these "backbench eruptions" are the furthest thing from a contradiction of the party line: They are the living embodiment of it.

Now, back to the rebuttal of Micheal's post:

And really strange, when Martin asked Harper about the statements that Harper's MPs had made during the campaign about homosexuals and abortion, Harper told Martin that he (Martin) had made the exact same comments 2 days previous. I'm sure, during an election campaign especially, that if the PM came out and declared that gays would not be eligible for public jobs, we'd know about it.

Except that that's not what was said, Micheal. The relevant comments are Rob Merrifield's musings that third-party counselling would be valuable (as the Globe put it) pre-abortion. Guess what — Paul Martin did say, two days earlier, that third-party counselling would be a good thing. In fact, if I remember correctly, he said it while answering student questions in a Catholic high school. That, incidentally, is rather more tame than what some sitting Ontario Liberal MPs want.

Double standard? Of course not. They're Liberals, from Ontario, not crazy right-wing Westerners. Nuff said.