What matters is not the context of Lukiwski's words - it's the text...part two

Ottawa Citizen

Eric Savoy, Citizen Special

Published: Thursday, April 10, 2008

The Harper government is not particularly interested in appeasing gay men and lesbians, who are unlikely to vote for them anyway, and by accepting Mr. Lukiwski's apology they throw a bone to their base of social conservatives, who are no doubt still smarting after the gay marriage legislation. But make no mistake: had Mr. Lukiwski described Jews, for example, as a "disease," he would share the fate of Mr. Ahenakew and be packing his bags for Saskatchewan.

What might this incident and its dubious resolution tell us about the status of gay men and lesbians in Canada? What can be said of a country that, in the spirit of pious liberalism, enacts no end of anti-discriminatory legislation, yet allows an "Honourable Member" of its Parliament to carry on despite a track record of virulent homophobia?

It would be too easy to dismiss the atonement and absolution of Mr. Lukiwski as mere hypocrisy, even if we believe it has been coldly calculated. As citizens, we are being reminded that there is a significant time-lag between the enactment of progressive legislation and the maturing of our collective social attitudes. This is not a useless lesson, and we would do well, as a nation, to reflect upon the likelihood that we are not as advanced as we think we are, and upon the possibility that we may not have come far at all.

For better or for worse, Tom Lukiwski serves the nation as a kind of Everyman. His words are evil -- indeed, they are the worst one can imagine -- but he is not evil, except in a typical and perhaps representative way.

Scratch the surface, and you may well find a considerable population of Tom Lukiwskis out there. It is not unlikely that many people will recognize themselves in Tom Lukiwski's speech act, and that some of them will burn with shame.

I still maintain that, even in 1991, no civilized person said such appalling things, but I also believe that such a toxic spill can have a salutary consequence. Mr. Lukiwski made a spectacle of himself, and that spectacle has not failed to attract our horrified fascination. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether people countenance or condemn him. What matters is that everybody will respond to Everyman by asking "Am I that man? Is that what I am?" And precisely as such, then, Tom Lukiwski has contributed something of value to the steep learning curve of tolerance, and to the difficult project of our democracy.

Eric Savoy is a professor of comparative literature at the Université de Montréal.