Underdog (8 page)

A year later, having decided Denise was the woman with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life, I concocted a plan to ask her to marry me while at a fancy dinner on her birthday. I booked a window-side table overlooking the Toronto skyline at the posh Canoe restaurant and arranged to have an engagement ring delivered in a dessert dome, along with a card expressing my love and passion for her. The evening went perfectly and she loved the ring. There was just one problem. It wasn't until the next day that Denise realized that I'd asked her to marry me. I hadn't actually used the word
marriage,
and Denise thought the ring was just a lovely birthday present. Being very close to the next table at the restaurant, I got a rare attack of shyness (I was still not used to being openly gay). I mistakenly thought the card spoke for itself.

When she realized my intentions and accepted, we were faced with the task of telling our families. My parents, realizing I was happy and settled at last, took it well. I suppose that once they accepted that I was gay and that I was deeply in love with another woman, marriage wasn't that big a leap for them. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for Denise's parents. Even though Denise's mother and father knew she'd dated women for many years, the reality of her marrying another woman in a traditional and very public ceremony was more than they could handle. For the longest time, her father steadfastly refused to attend our wedding and her mother would not agree to walk her down the aisle alone. Even though her very dear great-aunt, Lena Alexander (who passed away in June 2015), consented to be the stand-in for her parents, it tore me up inside watching Denise having to deal with the uncertainty and the hurtful possibility they would not attend. This was supposed to be a happy day,
and for months it was overshadowed by her parents' refusal to attend. We spent many meetings with our rabbi, Debra Landsberg, discussing various options in case her father didn't come. We also had a number of backup plans in case, heaven forbid, it rained that June afternoon of our outdoor wedding. We had chosen Rabbi Landsberg because she was knowledgeable, warm, and compassionate, and because she understood that Denise came from a far more conservative Jewish background than I did and was having some trouble getting used to the Reform traditions. It didn't hurt, either, that she had been chair of a coalition of liberal rabbis in favour of same-sex marriage when the legislation first came before the federal Parliament. As far as Rabbi Landsberg was concerned, all that mattered was that Denise and I were both Jewish and intended to set up a traditional Jewish home. Still, at one point just before the invitations went out, we wondered whether, like some people, we should simply elope to some fabulous far-off location instead. But after debating this at length, we decided that we should do no less than get married in a traditional Jewish ceremony. We also felt that, out of respect for those who fought for the right for same-sex couples to get married, we should exercise that right. Besides, we loved each other, it had taken us a long time to find each other, and why should we not have the right to experience all the headaches of a heterosexual couple?

And that we did during the six months preparing for our wedding day, which auspiciously fell that year on Father's Day. The challenge wasn't just trying to pare down the invitation list to an affordable number (without slighting certain family members) or dealing with the fallout of certain very close members of Denise's family deciding not to come because of
her father's decision not to attend. We wanted our outdoor, afternoon wedding to be elegant, meaningful, and full of charm, and that is where Denise came in. With her incredible sense of unconventional style and her tremendous creativity, my wife put together 101 details that gave our outdoor wedding (in the back garden of Sunnybrook Estates) charm, ambiance, and unequalled style. Somehow, her favourite travel destination, Venice, crept into the old-world music featured at and after the ceremony and into the decor. We even brought her Blackmoor sculptures and six-foot golden candelabras from our dining room to lend to the ambiance. But the pièce de résistance had to be our chuppah – which she also created herself and decorated with the seven fruits of Israel.

Three days before the wedding, Denise's father relented and decided to walk Denise down the aisle, with her mother on the other side. In the end, and very much to his credit, he admitted to us that it was a beautiful ceremony. Others, particularly Chris Blizzard, said that within minutes of the start of the ceremony they instantly forgot two women were marrying and thought of it as a traditionally Jewish ceremony presided over by a Reform rabbi and a cantor. We both wore custom-designed long white gowns. Instead of the bride circling the groom seven times, we circled each other three and a half times. Denise's cousin, Osnat, who came all the way from Israel, read our ketubah in Hebrew and I read the English words. At the end of the ceremony, before we were pronounced legally married, Denise and I broke the wine glass together (it was actually a light bulb wrapped in a napkin) – which symbolized that in times of happiness, we should never ever forget that life is fragile, something we have definitely experienced seven years into our marriage.

As if we didn't have enough on our plate, we spent the weeks leading up to our wedding in an adoption course with Jewish Family and Child Services and in a home study in preparation to possibly adopt a Muslim child from Israel. The fall before, just after I asked Denise to marry me, we travelled to Israel for a family bar mitzvah. During our visit, we drove up to Haifa to tour the Shabtai Levi Home – an orphanage serving Christian, Jewish, and Muslim children. Immediately after our return home, Denise's parents were to be honoured for their years of philanthropic efforts to sustain this home, and she wanted me to see what they did. While there, we met a sweet three-year-old Muslim boy who, as we were told then, would likely never find a permanent home because the Muslim community was not in the habit of adopting children. We also learned that while Israel would never allow Jewish children to leave the country for adoptive homes overseas, the same restrictions did not apply to Christian and Muslim children. We came home with a picture of this child, Rean, and set about trying to ensure that we were qualified to adopt him – a move that promised to be precedent-setting. As the months wore on and we learned that Rean's Arab social worker would not stand in the way of an adoption, we spent a good portion of our pre-wedding sessions with Rabbi Landsberg discussing how we would ease Rean's transition into life in Canada as well as how we should deal with his religious schooling. We completed the adoption course and were practically through our home study. But about a month before our wedding, we were suddenly informed by Shabtai Levi officials that Rean had been adopted out. To this day, we suspect he was not adopted but sent to a foster home – likely because the concept of a Canadian couple adopting him would have been far
too controversial. We were not turned down for being gay but because of the potential political fallout of allowing an Arab child to leave Israel. Denise was absolutely heartbroken, and for the longest time afterward, kept his picture on the refrigerator. She still has his picture, even though he'd be ten years old by now. She was so heartbroken that when she was diagnosed a year after our wedding with a very painful chronic disorder called trigeminal neuralgia – one that is often exacerbated by stress, loud noise, and atmospheric changes – we decided, reluctantly, to abandon our idea of adopting a small child. Even though we'd both make good moms, we've had to content ourselves with devoting our love and attention to our three furkids.

We move as a married couple in circles of friends who are both gay and straight. I take Denise proudly to political events and introduce her as my wife. We rabble-rouse together as a couple about issues of concern to the both of us. I joke that I've made Denise even more political than I am, but that was hardly difficult. We are known as the go-to couple by the elderly residents of our gated Florida community, where we purchased a second home in 2010. In fact, a number of the elderly ladies there attended a sunset ceremony on the beach where we renewed our vows – a surprise I arranged for Denise for Valentine's Day in 2015. The idea was not just to celebrate our love for each other but to recognize the lifting of the ban on same-sex marriage in Florida at the start of 2015.

We've also had to adjust to all the issues that beset a typical straight married couple meeting later in life and having to combine two households. I can honestly say marriage between a same-sex couple is as challenging as one between a straight couple. We deal with the same family issues, the
same concerns about money, and the same need to compromise between often dissimilar ways of doing things (even how we discipline our dachsies), of communicating, and of approaching everyday little things that can spark an argument. In our wedding speech, we summed up our union like this: we aren't opposites that attract, but rather, people with very different strengths that happen to complement each other. Denise jokes that I am her GPS and MBA – steering us in the right direction when it comes to both our finances and whenever we drive anywhere. I'm her office (also keeping our paperwork intact), and her memory. Denise has brought me an appreciation and understanding of beautiful things, a sense of humour and whimsy and learning how to slow down and make time for each other. Denise told the guests at our wedding that after we were married she'd make all the small decisions, but when a big decision came along, she'd let me make it. Oddly, in ten years together, there haven't been any BIG decisions. So far, I'm off the hook. After years of struggling to be true to who I am, I've learned to do what any good Jewish spouse should do: smile and say, “Yes, dear.”

In case it isn't abundantly clear after three chapters, I like to stir up shit. Most of the time, I believe it's the right thing to do – to correct a wrong. Sometimes, it is possible to get carried away. Either way, it's done with the very best of intentions. Perhaps this explains why my equally outspoken wife and I share a love for and loyalty to long-haired dachshunds. We could have picked a perfectly well-behaved breed like a Labrador retriever, an obedient, highly trainable dog that would follow us anywhere wagging his or her tail at anything – in other words, a dog that would not give us the slightest bit of pushback. But no. We had to pick dachshunds – strong-willed, challenging, independent, deaf when it comes to the word no, and full of attitude. They're the dog version of political incorrectness. I've lost count of how many times Flora, our little female and the dominant one in our household, will look at us like we're out of our minds whenever we
try to reprimand her for misbehaviour like climbing on our kitchen table in search of extra dinner scraps. Kishka tells me off when I leave him alone for a couple of hours, barking at me to let me know he's displeased. But the fact is, we love them because they're feisty and comical characters who are never dull. They're also extremely loyal and loving. Sound familiar?

I would be lying if I said I didn't love attention. Most people in the media fall into the same category. My “shit disturbing” comes more than anything from a deep disdain for and despair over the kind of political correctness that leaves people walking on eggshells – censoring themselves from saying or doing what they truly feel is the right thing for fear of offending. I have grown so sick of watching powerful men and women, particularly those in public life, turn into complete wimps when asked for their opinion on any remotely controversial issue. We are so busy pandering to political correctness, we've lost sight of how much the special interests take advantage of our incredible fear of being politically incorrect. We throw money at politically correct causes – access, equity, and anti-racism grants for example – without asking for or expecting accountability. We are afraid to call our homegrown terrorists for what they are – bloodthirsty, mad, evil, murdering zealots – and we excuse their actions as those simply of the mentally imbalanced. We lose sight of the fact that these evil terrorist groups attract, even prey on, the mentally ill, and that invariably these kinds of disenfranchised people end up being radicalized. Who else would commit murder in cold blood and then allow themselves to be killed fighting for an extremist cause? Why must the politically correct have you believe it is all so complicated? 1 + 1 = 2, not 4. Caitlyn Jenner is a man. Rachel Dolezal is not trans-racial or black. She's white.
Cheating on your spouse is just plain wrong, despite what the online dating sites dedicated to just that will tell you.

Once in a while, I wish my fellow Canadians weren't so polite, at least when it comes to calling out political correctness. In my experience as a reporter and a columnist, I've witnessed few politicians with the guts to take on political correctness, knowing full well the special interests, the elitist left, and the chattering classes will attack them with a vengeance from the moral high ground where they have firmly planted their self-righteous selves. Whether you sided politically with Stephen Harper or not – and I happen to have supported him – he was absolutely right when he had the guts to call out Muslim women wearing the full niqab, insisting their faces should be shown during citizenship swearing-in ceremonies. Mr. Harper's comments came in early 2014 as he vowed to appeal a court ruling allowing women who typically dress in the full niqab to keep it intact while swearing in as new Canadians. Mr. Harper was mocked for saying the full veil – which allows Muslim women to show only their eyes, and which is dictated by a culture that is rigidly patriarchial – is rooted in beliefs that are anti-women. The opposition leaders, especially the vapid, immature, and narcissistic Liberal leader (now prime minister), Justin Trudeau, took turns insisting Mr. Harper was promoting Islamophobia. Ah yes, the federal Conservatives are Islamophobic. No, not pro-women; not pro-democracy; not pro-Canadian values. Islamophobic. Heaven forbid we should call a spade a spade. Accusations of hate, bitterness, some kind of phobia, and/or stupidity are always the go-to position for the self-righteous and politically correct. They've been levelled at me more than once.

What part of becoming a Canadian do these extremist Muslim women and their communities not understand? We are not in Abu Dhabi. We are in Canada, a country that not only respects all races and religions but respects freedoms and democracy. Being forced to cover oneself in a full tent, with hair, head, and face blacked out except for one's eyes, and walking several paces behind one's husband is not the least bit respectful of women's rights and freedoms. It is reminiscent of the Dark Ages. What part of that do the politically correct hysterics and assorted anti-Harper leftists not understand? It says these women are chattels and in need of being kept docile like the character of Kate in Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew
from 1592. Author and poet Margaret Atwood got right into the act in the middle of March 2015 with a series of bordering-on-childish tweets under the hashtag #dresscodePM. She tweeted such gems as “Is your face your ‘identity?' Your signature, your fingerprints, your iris scan + your DNA might have something to do with it?” She also put up a picture on Twitter of Queen Victoria wearing her crown and veil (both of which did not cover her face), adding the tweet, “Not respectable.” This is the same Ms. Atwood whose feminism comes out loud and clear in her poetry, who railed against misogyny in her 1985 novel
The Handmaid's Tale,
and whose 1969 novel
The Edible Woman
came about a decade into the second wave of feminism. Are we to take from her nonsensical Twitter comments that she is a feminist when it suits her? Or did Atwood and her fellow faux feminists hate Mr. Harper so much that in order to show him up, they took the ridiculous stance of defending women's right to wear this regressive veil? Or is their response simply political correctness in overdrive, a knee-jerk reaction against the right?
Still, I repeatedly shake my head wondering why they'd make absolute fools of themselves by condoning such a regressive, anti-feminist act.

I think I've made a decent career at the
Toronto Sun
by railing against examples of political correctness gone berserk, whether it be Muslim cabbies refusing to take me and my dog Kishka at the airport (because of religious beliefs that consider dogs unclean) or some heavily subsidized government program that made no sense to me. While on the education beat in the mid-1990s, and still deep in the closet myself, I had trouble understanding why the Toronto school board pushed for segregated classes for black and homosexual students. The special Triangle program, which operates to this day, is offered to students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered who can't operate in a mainstream program because they are experiencing homophobia or bullying. It seemed like a complete contradiction and pure hypocrisy to me that a board purporting to be politically correct and tolerant, that preaches inclusivity and offers anti-bullying programs up the proverbial yin-yang, would encourage such students to remove themselves from mainstream classrooms. How do they expect to educate straight students and demand acceptance of the LGBT lifestyle if gay and lesbian students are segregated in a special school? Besides, what kind of contradictory message does it send that while they allow LGBT students to pull out of mainstream classrooms, they are integrating students who suffer from autism or other learning disorders? Talk about a lack of consistency. Segregating gay and lesbian students always seemed to me the exact wrong way to go about garnering acceptance. In fact, to me it was a cop-out – a way of giving homophobia a free pass. I always
wondered why school officials simply couldn't, or didn't have the will to, enforce their own policies designed to counter bullying and harassment.

As I found out on a recent assignment, not much has changed. To look good, and perhaps as an excuse to expand their bureaucratic fiefdoms, the Toronto school board has created all kinds of nice, politically correct anti-bullying policies and hired a long list of staff to tackle gender-based violence. It's all just window dressing. As I found out in 2014 with the sad case of fourteen-year-old Toronto student Mylissa Black – who was bullied relentlessly in her elementary school for four years to the point where she considered suicide while her principal and the superintendent turned a blind eye – it seems that far too many of the board's bureaucrats have done nothing but allow the problem to fester in their schools, even though carefully crafted anti-bullying policies are at their disposal. Also, what about some plain and common sense? How about displaying some tough love toward those students who bully aggressively and without remorse? It's a question of will, which teachers and their bosses do not seem to have: they would sooner sweep the problem under the rug for fear that any attempts to deal with violence might affect the public image of their schools or force them to deal with parents who might perceive it a problem that their kid is a bully. Miss Black was a case in point. Her parents repeatedly sought action from the school, but the principal, even though she had disciplinary tools she could have employed, like week-long suspensions, did not use them. Her inaction only enabled the students who victimized the young woman. That, in itself, is a sad statement. Not only are our public schools delivering a touchy-feely curriculum – particularly in math, literacy, and
writing – that is leaving kids ill-prepared for college, university, and the workplace, but they have also chosen to take a back seat when it comes to meting out proper consequences for bad behaviour. As a consequence, the board has become enablers of the very abusive behaviour they have put policies in place to prevent.

AT TORONTO CITY HALL,
officials and the politicians have become so decidedly focused on hiring visible minorities to show they run a “positive and progressive workplace” – a policy that seemed to ramp up during Mayor David Miller's time in office – that a reverse discrimination has developed. I've heard it over and over again that white males need not apply for management jobs at the city. Don't get me wrong. I believe everybody deserves a fair chance, regardless of their gender, race, or country of origin. But it is clear to me that in an attempt to bend over backwards to ensure that the right mix of visible minorities appears in every office at City Hall, adherence to standards, including a proper dress code, has been severely relaxed. This is political correctness at work – placing greater value on how things appear rather than what makes good old common sense.

I don't consider myself old-fashioned. However, I was constantly amazed by the number of female employees, even in management at City Hall, dressed like they had just left their night job on Jarvis Street, or were about to go to the gym or take out the trash. Managers showed up to meetings like they've never even heard of a jacket or tie. My goodness, it wasn't as if they weren't making enough to afford a suit or two. In my mind, it represents a complete lack of respect for
the job. How can one have pride in one's job if there is no effort instilled to look like one comes to work ready to work? I also lost count of how many times I phoned City Hall offices and not for the life of me was able to understand the administrative assistant or clerk at the other end of the line – their command of the English language was so weak. Surely it isn't too much to expect people in those jobs to have a better command of English. One would think not, but try and say this in “polite” company and you risk being called a racist.

Nearly from the moment I walked into City Hall as the
Toronto Sun
's columnist, I had trouble understanding the purpose of what were called “access and equity grants.” This was a pot of money that was given every year to a variety of groups such as those from Afghan, Aboriginal, Asian, African, Somali, or Arab backgrounds or representing the LGBT population that would propose politically correct, touchy-feely projects intended to help stamp out racism and oppression. It came as no surprise to me when that pot nearly doubled to $750,000 per year during Mayor David Miller's two terms. How these groups were supposed to eliminate racism I was never quite sure. Let us consider that while the money was being spent, I would repeatedly hear that anti-Semitic acts of vandalism continued to rise in Toronto and other large Canadian cities. Perhaps it's because City Hall never gave grants to Jewish groups. Year after year, they were conspicuously absent from the list of groups and projects that were handed tax money. There was even a political correctness bordering on reverse discrimination when it came to doling out those anti-racism grants. Each and every year, an A-list of fuzzy-wuzzy visible minority causes would automatically be handed these grants without question, and with few checks and balances
on whether they accomplished anything remotely related to their mandate and goals, if goals existed. Each time I would bring up the fact that these grants were poorly monitored and represented one of the worst examples of political correctness run amok, city officials would look at me like I was both crazy and heartless. “There she goes again…”

I still remember the day in 2005 when I turned up at a city-funded community safety conference that was supposed to address the escalating gun violence and drug and gang problems of that summer, labelled the “Summer of the Gun.” Instead of witnessing any serious and practical discussion to address a very real issue that continues to affect the city, however, I came just in time to hear an Australian poet and faith healer break into song with a tune she said had the power to remove “barriers.” The director of the Centre for Indigenous Education at the University of Melbourne told the 150 people who hung on to her every word to close their eyes while she sang, and to remember the “sacred” words she chanted in her native dialect. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and seeing. All eyes in the room were firmly shut! It's not as if anyone could understand what she was shrieking, let alone remember it. No one sat there, as I did, wondering first of all what the hell this ridiculous gobbledygook had to do with gun violence and, more significantly, how much this woman was costing taxpayers. If the audience there thought her antics crazy, they certainly weren't showing it. Like a bunch of indoctrinated cultists, they were all caught up in the madness of that moment. As ridiculous as they were, the grants persisted because, like the audience watching the Australian drummer that June day, no bureaucrat or politician ever had the guts to say “Stop the madness” or to cancel the grants for fear he or she
would be called inhumane, racist, and all kinds of other pejorative terms perpetuated by the limousine lefties at City Hall.