BY ANDREA HOUSTON - Perhaps the best way to fight the Toronto Sun is to hit them where it hurts: their income.

Toronto activist Justin Beach thinks so. That's why he has launched Operation Sunset, a new campaign aimed at shining some light on the Sun's role in helping spread hate.

Beach is asking people to send a message to The Sun by not supporting its advertisers. Consider shopping at stores other than The Bay or HMV this holiday season. Go to Mr. Sub instead of Subway.

Over the next few weeks, Beach will be periodically publishing the names of Sun advertisers on the website. The first batch includes The Bay, Porter Airlines, Subway, HMV and Ontario Energy Group.

"Advertising is where The Sun earns its money," he says. "Also, The Sun supports the Ford administration that is trying to close libraries, parks, reduce service on the TTC and lay-off public workers.

"It seems irresponsible for Toronto companies to continue to support a paper that wants to seriously damage the standard of living."

The campaign is targeted at the Toronto Sun, which Beach describes as a "a right-wing propaganda machine," as opposed to the Sun News Network, which everyone everywhere describes as a right-wing propaganda machine.

Toronto Sun publisher Mike Power could not be reached for comment.

The Sun pulled out of the Ontario Press Council in July. At the time, John Honderich — a former publisher of the Star and the current chair of Torstar's board of directors — called the decision “most disturbing,” adding “Sun Media will abide by its own standards of journalism and not be accountable to anyone.”

In October, the Toronto Sun refused to apologize for running an ad in its Oct 2 edition that activists have called transphobic.

The ad, from the Institute for Canadian Values, is a slightly modified version of a full-page ad that ran in the National Post on Sept 24 and Sept 28. Following a social media outcry, the National Post issued an apology and stated that the proceeds from the ad sale would be donated to a queer charitable organization. 

A version of the advertisement subsequently ran for weeks on Sun TV.

Then this month, Chris Bolton, the chair of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) announced he plans to file a formal complaint against Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party and Sun Media over homophobic campaign flyers that were distributed during the provincial election and a transphobic television ad campaign that aired for three weeks following it. 

Media companies should realize there are consequences for what they do, says Beach. "It's important for people to realize that where you choose to do business is a form of democracy." 

Follow the campaign on Facebook and Twitter. 

Follow Xtra reporter Andrea Houston on Twitter at @dreahouston. 

The BBC is defending its decision to include an interview with an anti-gay fundamentalist in a news report aired last week about the birth of Elton John and David Furnish's surrogate child. The broadcaster says it was an effort to present "all sides of the debate."

The report aired Dec 28 on BBC's News at Six. It features just one interview, with fundamentalist Stephen Green from a group called Christian Voice, who says: "This isn’t just a designer baby for Sir Elton John, this is a designer accessory... Now it seems like money can buy him anything, and so he has entered into this peculiar arrangement... A baby needs a mother, and it seems an act of pure selfishness to deprive a baby of a mother."

In December 2009, Green was quoted in a Christian Voice press release defending a proposed Ugandan law that would make homosexuality punishable by death: "a parliamentarian in Uganda is trying to protect his nation’s children."

The BBC item conveniently neglects to mention that the person they found to publicly condemn John and Furnish would be cool with a government sentencing the couple to death for sodomy.  

PinkNews reports that a BBC spokesman defended the decision to include Green:

"The BBC claim that there is genuine debate about gay couples having surrogate children and that it was right for the BBC to find someone who was opposed to the practise as the only interview in the report."

The controversy stemming from the BBC's efforts to provide "balance" is regrettably familiar to followers of Canadian mainstream media, where it's become commonplace to encounter the opinions of evangelical Charles McVety in reports on issues related to the gay community.

Back in April of last year you could've used the minute hand of a clock to measure the elapsed time between The Globe and Mail's trumpeting of McVety's opposition to Ontario's revised sex education curriculum on page A1 — the Globe's most prominent editorial real estate — and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's decision to abandon the curriculum.

The April 21 article, titled "The end of innuendo: Ont schools making sex education more explicit," reports that opposition to the curriculum "came to light" when "members of a religious, 'family-focused' coalition threatened to pull their children out of school on May 10 unless Premier Dalton McGuinty abandons the changes." It continues:

Christian right leader Charles McVety, who is also part of the coalition, said it is unconscionable to teach children as young as eight years old gender identity and sexual orientation. He accused the Premier of listening to "special interest groups with an agenda," including former education minister Kathleen Wynne, who is openly gay.

The article makes no effort to explain what the "agenda" might be, but after McVety's recent censure by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) for violating industry standards — in part for his views on the motivation behind the curriculum — we now know more about what inspired his opposition.

The CBSC decision includes this transcript from the Jan 17, 2010, edition of McVety's show, The Word:

When we send little Johnny and little Jane to school, not to learn to be homosexuals and lesbians. We send them there to learn reading, writing and arithmetic and history and all these wonderful things, but unfortunately there is an activist group that is afoot that wants to change our curriculum.  Why?  Because unfortunately they have an insatiable appetite for sex, especially with young people.  And there’re not enough of them, so they want to proselytize your children and mine, our grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals.

So the leader of the successful charge against the curriculum was motivated by his belief that there is a gay agenda to convert children to homosexuality, because of an "insatiable appetite for sex." Either The Globe and Mail didn't report this or McVety left it out when he talked to reporters from the paper. It's a significant omission, particularly considering this twisted theory caused the CBSC to rebuke McVety and Crossroads Television Ontario (CTS) to temporarily pull his show.

If McVety's homophobic delusions about gay conspiracies to convert children aren't enough to make our mainstream media stop taking him seriously, perhaps they should take a look at a recent Jewish Tribune article examining the CBSC's ruling after the ruling was misrepresented in the National Post. McVety defends himself against the charges:

“They accuse me of saying that homosexuals prey on children. I never said that,” Rev McVety told the Jewish Tribune. “I didn't imply it."

According to the transcripts included in the CBSC decision, he unequivocally said homosexuals prey on children.

Let's hope the Canadian mainstream media's 2011 new year's resolutions include removing Christian ministers with records of untruthfulness from their contact lists.

UPDATE: Just received a message from Jonathan Kay (via Facebook) explaining it was our message to him that led him to reevaluate his post. It reads: "After I got your note, I revisited the CBSC decision and reviewed the media coverage of it. You were correct that the CBSC decision was based on aspects of McVety's pronouncements that were not directly related to the legal issues I discussed in my blog post. And so I took the blog post down." We also received a note from a reader who tells us the National Post journalist who wrote the original news item continues to stand by the accuracy of his piece. While we welcome Kay's decision to "revisit" the facts — rather than relying on McVety's own spin — we're still wondering, given the effort made by the CBSC to clarify that McVety's opposition to homosexuality or gay pride played no role in its verdict (in both the full text of its ruling and the press release), how a renowned columnist for a major national newspaper got this so wrong? 

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"Garbage in, garbage out" is a popular computer science concept and an apt way to describe National Post columnist Jonathan Kay's recent musings about Pride and a Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) decision.  

A misleading story written by the Post about the CBSC's recent reprimand of Charles McVety for broadcast regulation violations inspired Kay to pen an opinion piece so wholly inaccurate that all traces of the delusional screed had to be scrubbed from the paper's website only days after the piece first appeared online Monday.

Here's how his column appeared on the site until sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning:
 

The column can be still be read at this Google page cache here.

This is what appears now:

As noted last weekend on this blog (and by others), the Post's news report on the Panel decision misrepresented it as a reprimand of McVety's opposition to Pride and the new proposed Ontario Sex Education curriculum.

Kay dedicates about half of his column to reprinting the report, yet not a single quote from the CBSC appears in his piece.

Raising alarm bells, Kay blasts his straw man decision as a horrible violation of McVety's rights and, further, our crusader says the minister should be entitled to "take a dim view of a lifestyle that the Bible says goes against God's will."

Had Kay bothered to read the decision he'd know that the CBSC panel felt the same way. In fact, all he had to read was a single line from the report and he'd know the panel wasn't censuring McVety for opposition to homosexuality at all, but, instead, for suggesting all gays are pedophiles.

McVety may not like homosexuality. That is his entitlement, but to leave the totally unsubstantiated impression that gay and lesbian adults have a predilection toward young, underage people is insidious and unacceptable.

Full stop.

Yet Kay has worked himself up into such a frenzy over the nudists at Pride he has little time for facts:

What we effectively have here is a religious Christian being driven off the air for doing little more than appealing to the provisions of our Criminal Code — not the Bible.

Was Kay in such a frantic rush to pound Pride and get some shots in at nudists that he couldn't stop to read the CBSC decision himself? It certainly looks that way.

Xtra called and emailed Kay this week to ask about the inaccuracies in his column but has received no response. With the column now pulled, we're curious if it's a choice he made himself or if it was pulled by another editor. And why no mention of the removal anywhere on the site?

That he didn't bother with facts because he was in such a hurry to complain about the degenerates at the Pride parade and blast the nudists as criminals is a revealing look at how Kay sees our annual festival. 



Wonder if he's completed a Community Advisory Panel survey yet?

UPDATE DEC 12: Audio clips fixed.

UPDATE DEC 11:The channel that broadcasts Charles McVety's weekly program Word TV has pulled the show until it is assured the program will comply with Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) regulations.

Crossroads Television Ontario (CTS) explained the decision in a statement sent to Xtra by its chief shared services officer, Lara Dewar:

As a regulated broadcaster we have a responsibility to comply with the Canadian Association of Broadcaster’s Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code. CTS is a member in good standing of the CBSC, the group that evaluates complaints related to these regulations. It is our policy in these circumstances not to air the program until we have assurance from the program that content will be compliant.   

Meanwhile McVety has taken to his program's website to express his anger with the industry watchdog's decision:

On Wednesday, December 8th the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council launched a viscous [sic] attack against free speech and Word TV, knocking the program from CTS until further notice. Word TV is deemed to be "malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial" for using the term "sex parade" and opposing the proposed Ontario Sex Ed curriculum.

McVety's statement misrepresents the CBSC decision as a censure of his comments about Pride and the Ontario sex ed curriculum. The decision by the panel is quite explicit about what led to its decision and very clearly explains that McVety's general opposition to both were "acceptable." The CBSC release reads:

With respect to the comments about homosexuality, the Panel explained that the program was entitled to air objections to that practice generally, to government funding of gay pride parades and to changes made to an Ontario school curriculum that would include discussion of homosexuality. 

The release makes quite clear that McVety's censure resulted solely from his suggestion "that homosexuals prey on children." In fact, the panel's release cites a specific clause, the "Human Rights, Religious Programming and Negative Portrayal Clause."

But it's not only McVety who reports the decision inaccurately.

Readers of both the National Post and CTV reports on the ruling could easily be left assuming the decision resulted merely from McVety's opposition to Pride and the Ontario sex ed curriculum – as neither source mentions his suggestion that gays could use both as recruiting tools for young children. The National Post report reads:

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a self-regulated industry watchdog, said that Rev McVety disparaged gays in episodes that ran between July 2009 and February 2010 when commenting on Toronto's massive gay pride parade and a revised Ontario sex curriculum for grade schools.

While it's true the council said McVety disparaged gays, those comments alone didn't result in the censure. The CTV report also distorts the decision, omitting any reference to McVety's suggestion that all gays prey on children (UPDATE: For a report that doesn't mislead readers, check out this Yahoo News item). 

McVety has not returned Xtra's calls for comment, but he did speak to Newstalk 1010's Jim Richards. On the show, Richards explains to McVety that his censure resulted from suggestions that gay pride is a "pedophile's dream," not from simple opposition to it, but McVety, the president of the Canada Christian College, denies it.

However, not 20 seconds later, McVety contradicts himself and ends up repeating the very claim that resulted in his censure by the council: 

Listen to the rest of the interview here.

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On Dec 8, a Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) panel concluded that anti-gay comments made on a program hosted by evangelical Charles McVety violated the broadcast industry's professional broadcast code.

The CBSC panel decision found that comments that aired "objections to that practice [of homosexuality] generally," as well as those relating to government funding of Pride and the Ontario school curriculum were acceptable (Gay Pride, explained the panel, is not "everyone’s cup of tea"), but "when, however, the program suggested that homosexuals prey on children," it violated the code.

From the decision:

“McVety may not like homosexuality. That is his entitlement, but to leave the totally unsubstantiated impression that gay and lesbian adults have a predilection toward young, underage people is insidious and unacceptable. In all, the Panel finds the McVety mis-characterizations as excessive, inappropriate, disparaging, and abusive [...].”

The comments were made on an evangelical Christian program, Word TV, broadcast on CTS (Crossroads Television Ontario). CTS also airs Michael Coren's talk show.

The decision cites a number of transcripts from the show, including this hostile rant against the need for a new Ontario sex education curriculum:

Why? Because unfortunately they have an insatiable appetite for sex, especially with young people. And there’re not enough of them, so they want to proselytize your children and mine, our grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals. And they’ve seized our Ministry of Education and now they’re implementing this! Back when we led the campaign to defend marriage in, oh, in 2005, we warned that once they legalized same-sex marriage, then that will be the legal groundwork for them to change our curriculum and to start teaching this to our children. Well, here it is, my friends. Something that we said five years ago is now alive and well in the province of Ontario.

Last April, days before Premier McGuinty pulled the new Ontario sex education curriculum, the Canadian mainsteam media gave a significant amount of coverage and attention to McVety's opposition to the new program.

Given this decision by the CBSC, it seems worth asking again: Why does mainstream media cover Charles McVety?

Today, Queer Ontario, Egale Canada and the AIDS Committee of London joined the ranks of those calling for the implementation of Ontario’s shelved 2010 sex ed curriculum.

Nick Mulé of Queer Ontario calls Dalton McGuinty’s announcement “unfortunate and unnecessary.”

In a press release, Helen Kennedy of Egale calls it “disappointing.”

In January, the province released an update of sexual education and health curriculum, the first in 12 years. After complaints from the religious right, Premier Dalton McGuinty said the province would pull the new curriculum pending a “re-think.”

Mulé says that the curriculum, which would have rolled out in September, is “a step forward,” but that future guidelines should include more material that doesn’t characterize sex only in terms of risk.

He’s also wary of McGuinty’s pledge to conduct additional consultations.

“We need to make sure that they don’t put aside the first round of consultations,” which included sexual health professionals and academics, he says.

Kennedy says that the new curriculum — which, in the early years, focuses on respect for difference — would help prevent bullying and harassment.

“A little education now can stop a lot of pain and violence later,” writes Kennedy.

Paul Sutton, an educator with the AIDS Committee of London, says that the changes in the document are overdue. Sex and sexual health education early on increases the likelihood that young people will make healthy sexual choices as they grow up.

He points out that the 1998 guidelines are “a hangover from the Common Sense Revolution” of Mike Harris. McGuinty’s reversal shows that conservative ideas are still powerful.

“It is a harrowing reminder of how the rightwing uses fearmongering” to drive public policy, says Sutton.

Their comments follow endorsements of the 2010 curriculum by the Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer Parenting Network, the AIDS Committee of Toronto and the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario. The provincial New Democrats also support the curriculum.

UPDATE: CTV is reporting that Toronto's medical officer of health has also endorsed the 2010 curriculum.

"Kids need clear, unbiased, age-appropriate information and parents need the support offered by a strong sexual health program in schools," says Dr David McKeown.