10 Things Social Conservatives Need To Do…

Well, now that this week has come to a close and the vote on readdressing the marriage it is a time to do some reflecting. Obviously, many social conservatives have probably seen the pages of the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC website, Eagle Canada and other blatently anti-family outlets and yes, they were gloating and acting cocky in light of the Thursday vote. However, while venting about such sources and their authors might help let off a little steam, it will not change anyone’s mind. Social neutrals care not for arguements on why one side is wrong by for why one side is right. I personally feel exhausted after trying to point out all the merits of keeping marriage’s definition restricted to a union between and a woman and equally tired of pointing out the hypocracy and faults of my opponents. Instead, as a social conservative myself, I feel my post here tonight is best spent addressing my fellow socons, since we need to have a serious talk!

Thus tonight, I present 10 things social conservatives need to do to establish (note I didn’t say maintain) a relevance in the public forum. This isn’t just for SSM, but for other issues both past and yet to come (and they will come soon; EAGLE employs a handy number of people who don’t want to be out of a job next week…!). I would hope that if you are a socon, that you take the time to comment on these suggestions and pass them along to other socons and socon organizations. Ultimately, it will be by communicating with each other that we will develop a way to communicate with the rest of the Canadian public. Enjoy!

1) Don’t Blame Prime Minister Harper!

Blogging Tories website Back Off Government had a post the day after the Commons vote that refered to LifeSite News. For those out of the loop, LifeSite is probably the only significant pro-family website on the internet (I’ll tackle that point further down…), and on Thursday, it published a news story that attacked the Prime Minister for not doing enough to sway the vote. This sort of knee-jerk reaction is common within the social conservative movement in Canada; if things don’t go our way, we’ll blame whoever seems to be the easiest target.

Let me say this as an individual has taken more than his share of lumps for being a supporter of family values: we can ask no more of Harper right now! I can think of no other leader who has stuck his neck out further than our Prime Minister, who has allowed us a say in the public debates surrounding this issue. He can’t be blamed for the fact that, as a group, we didn’t rally behind him. Some may argue Harper hasn’t been as staunchly supportive as we could hope for, ala the abortion resolution that the CPC made in 2005, but this is just sour grapes; if you look at successful social conservative movements like the one south of the border, they know better than to bite off more than they can chew. Yes, children are dying every day because of abortions, but running a campaign that changes everything at once is counterproductive and will only delay the day when those deaths will stop.

Stephen Harper has kept his promises, and handed us a golden opertunity that we, yes socons, spoiled (more on that later too!). Unless we can work to provide him with a substancial amount of support to reopen one of our debates later on in his lifetime as PM (and it will be a while…), he owes us nothing on SSM!

2) Admit That We Need Help
I put this after not blaming Prime Minister Harper because, again, it seems that socons are too eager to blame somebody else, particularly when, aside from the gay lobby, we hold the most blame for seeing C-38 and Thursday’s resolution go the way they did.

The social conservative movement in Canada is in tatters and has no chance of retaining the viable political clout that it needs if it is going to be taken seriously. Our message is inconsistent at best, and inward-looking at worst. Before we can even begin to tackle these issues and build ourselves up though, like the alcoholic, we need to realize that we have a problem…

3) Realize Our Opponents Will Never Naturally Accept Us

Next, we need to look at our opponents, but not obsess over them as we all too often do. We somehow get the impression that by presenting our case and by being polite, that all of Church St. will realize the error of their ways and en masse, give up their attack on the family. Unless God Himself gets involved, and I must admit it could one day if we consider all options, this will not happen. We have to earn respect, not expect it when it comes to the liberal media, homosexual advocates and the rest of the massive anti-family lobby.

You earn respect by developing clout and by becoming a force to be reckoned with. If the gay lobby one day felt like it was going to lose its niche definition of civil marriage, don’t for a second doubt that the idea of “compromising” with civil unions will come up. Sure they’ll wail and complain, call us nasty names at first, but eventually when reality hits and a vote nears, you’ll see the rhetoric tone down. We have to get the MPs and the poll numbers first for that to happen though. We won’t be winning over the editorial board of the Globe and Mail, nor will they play nice with us…unless they have to!

4)Learn Patience

Finally, before we get into strategy details, I have to say that we really need to learn patience. I hinted at this when I said that we shouldn’t be trying to tackle all issues at once. Believe it or not, abortion seems more winnable right now; we might just want to settle for tackling that one first, and in small waves (like banning certain types of abortion). This would make it easier to argue for banning all types of abortion since “a woman’s right to make choices over her body” won’t be accepted as an absolute; by extension, when abortion is gone, we’d be better perceived as a force of positive action as social conservatives, meaning that our arguements against “gay marriage” won’t just be dismissed as bigotry. This is called momentum, and currently we have the bad kind; changing that takes time and hard work!

5) Rally The Troops

As one letter writer wrote in the Globe on Friday, “same-sex marriage” won the day not because of its merits but because in the battle over public opinion and particularly the opinions of our MPs, the pro-family side never showed up to fight! It’s true; a lot of socons I met over the last three years actually expected that if we just silently protested this gay marriage nonsense by sitting on our hands, then we’d win the day over because our arguement had more sense to it. That may be true, but someone who is on the fence obviously won’t know that if you don’t bother to tell him or her! We need to engage the public, let them know the realities behind letting gays and lesbians using the term marriage for their own purposes. We also have to start acting as a coalition, getting ourselves organized and confronting the media and political parties as a bloc. There is strength in numbers, but only if those numbers mean something! Its time we get off our seats and get involved!

6) ‘tune the Message

I support the pro-family side, but man, there are days when I’m honestly embarassed by how we allow ourselves to be portrayed on television. True, networks and newspapers will spin things to suit their own impressions of the world, but only by as much as they can! When we are showing up at rallies (and not many of us are, as my last suggestion indicates), it’s usually to preach to the choir. When we send out press releases, it is full of language that is equivilant to Eagle sending out a release saying that we’re all a bunch of hateful, rednecked, homophobic bigots. We have two groups of people we need to target and who we can win over:

i) people who don’t support us now but will if we are effective at presenting our own arguements,

and ii) people who support our causes but still vote in anti-family candidates because they feel other issues are important.

I will tackle this second group in a second, but first let’s realize that for those people who are essentially on the fence, we have to speak in terms they accept and can relate to. While marriage is very religious, it is not an exclusively religious issue! It is a matter of childrens’ rights, goverment intervention and respect for religious institutions. We can win over soccer moms, libertarians and Charterists respectively if we frame our arguements in those terms! We need to start streamlining our message, making it about protection of rights and dignity instead about destruction and woe!

7) Go After All Political Parties

While it’s nice to be part of a party that is truly tolerant and accpets our country’s relgious and philisophical diversity (unlike other parties, no names…). However, so long as only one party is willing to accept social conservatives within the ranks and allow us to help shape that party’s policy, we will continue to see the demonification of Conservative leaders whenever a controversial social issue pops up. The Liberals, make no mistake, will orchastrate them if they can so as to make these issues a wedge during elections. Furthermore, many socially conservative voters will simply not grit their teeth and vote Conservative over even something like redefining marriage.

It makes sense then to try to engage the other political parties and, relying on the above-mentioned understanding that we have to earn clout and respect, bring the battle to within these parties. I wholeheartedly suggest that Liberal social conservatives, or pro-family Bloc members start organizing with their peers and trying to nominate pro-family candidates for their party in their ridings. If, in most Ontario ridings for example, the Liberal and Conservative candidates are both pro-family, where would the scariness lie? History shows that the NDP can’t overcome this sort of situation, and then we’d have a few more pro-family voices in the Commons from two parties, which would legitimize any changes to abortion or marriage laws in the future. Socon organizaitons need to start considering this and organizing not only within each riding but within each party too!

8) Start Networking

This probably should have been said sooner, but one way that social conservatives will have to achieve the above-mentioned goals is by talking to one another. Instead of all of us working individually to defend the family, would it not make more sense if we shared information, and worked jointly on local and national projects?
9) Learn That The Medium Is The Message

As I said earlier, LifeSite is pretty much the only MSM voice of pro-family issues…and that’s quite the stretch by calling it MSM. There is a lot of work to be done in making sure that newspapers, television stations and other forms of news delivery are at least paying lip-service to the messages we are sending out to Canadians. Some of this means starting up new outlets, like other websites, blogrolls (see Back Off Government for example), and print, but it also means taking some of the big players head on by either starting up or buying into some MSM outlets. Admittedly, this latter goal will take a while to accomplish but it can be done; just look at the Republicans and the Fox News empire today. Of course, it also leads nicely into my last point…

10)Raise The Almighty Dollar
These campaigns and strategies will require a lot of cash! It would be nice to have a few upper class Canadians who are concerned about family issues take care of some of the heavy lifting (like getting us a voice in the secular MSM), but it also involves setting up an effective fundraising network though individuals, companies and parishes. There have been a handful of studies indicating that socons are more generous with donations than social liberals…we’ve already got an advantage over the other guys if we’re just willing to use it!