Not an existential threat, just another obstacle against progress.
Earlier in this thread we were talking about how Megan Murphy's view (that trans people with male physiology shouldn't be in female-only safe spaces) makes her a "radical" in the eyes of the progressives, and how they want to "get" her for not being progressive enough.
Meanwhile the same progressives are all in favor of bringing in tens of thousands more people from countries where people don't think men and women should even pray together, let alone shower together, and where trans people would be imprisoned or worse.
Megan Murphy is the devil incarnate for not being progressive enough on trans rights, while bringing in tens of thousands of immigrants and refugees who for the most part think trans people are an abomination is a great idea that should be encouraged.
I just don't get it.
Herein lies the problem with naming 'groups' and claiming they all have the same thoughts - I agree with Murphy that male-looking people don't really need to be in women-only spaces, but because I also don't see a problem with Muslims immigrating to Canada, I'm lumped in with people you might consider hypocritical or inconsistent.
I think Canadian culture is strong enough to withstand conservatism. People from India are generally more 'conservative' than Canadians when it comes to social acceptance of homosexuals or trans people, yet we have still moved ahead with progressive policies despite the hundreds of thousands of Indians that have emigrated to Canada in the last two decades. If conservative immigrants were such a threat to Canadian progressiveness, why does Canadian progressiveness happen despite the ever-increasing number of 'conservative' immigrants within Canada?
Overall, only about 30% of Canadians vote for "Conservative" in any given election, even the immigrants who might want to support a party who espoused family values and whose members were also more likely to disapprove of homosexuality and trans people. The claim is that of course the "immigrants" want to support the party who will 'let more people in', but would they really abandon their intolerance against gays/trans if that were such an inflexible aspect of their culture or religion? Especially since the immigration rate doesn't change much between governments.
I looked at this a while back and concluded that of the roughly 250,000 there were a bit under 100,000 from countries I viewed as being conservative Muslim nations-- North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East aside from Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan.
According to this source (
http://canadaimmigrants.com/canada-immigrants-by-source-country-2016/), in 2016 we accepted about 71,000 immigrants from conservative Muslim nations. If I were worried about "conservatism" and anti-LGBT attitudes, I would also include India, Eritrea and Russia, all of which have legal sanctions against LGBT, which add another ~49,000 for a total of ~120,000 people with alleged "cultural or religious views not in line with Canadian values". We also accepted ~113,000 people from countries which don't criminalize LGBT activity, although social acceptance isn't as certain. Ultimately, Canada is at the forefront of the world in terms of progressive values, so nearly any country we accept immigrants from is likely to be somewhat socially behind us in terms of 'progressive' values.
And I point out, once again, that we have been accepting refugees from the essentially the same countries, in roughly the same ratios for decades, yet we have still managed to implement progressive policies, and have increased the rights of gays, trans and women. It simply does not seem logical that only those from Muslim-majority countries will suddenly turn us on our ear and result in going backwards in this regard.
They might not come to Canada with the idea of turning it into the new Saudi Arabia, but when politicians like Jason Kenney reach out to them and say "hey, we oppose gay people too! let's be friends!" they may well listen. That was the basis of the Conservative Party's "ethnic outreach" efforts about 10-12 years ago. Taking out ads in non-English community papers-- the Sikh newspapers, the Arabic newspapers, promoting a socially conservative message that was well to the right of what the party was willing to say in English.
This flies in the face of the conservative argument that "immigrants will only vote Liberal because of Liberals open door policy on immigration, that's why Liberals let in unlimited numbers of immigrants and refugees". I did a quick search and couldn't find anything I considered credible on voting habits of immigrants, but judging by who I see running for various parties, it looks to me as if immigrants tend towards more socially liberal platforms by a slight margin. But I could be wrong about that.
I believe that homosexual people living in Muslim countries are treated by Canada as valid refugee claimants.
Are homosexuals in Eritrea (50% Christian/50% Islamic), Russia (Catholic official religion) and Uganda (Christian) treated as refugees as well? All three of those countries jail homosexuals, and in Eritrea and Uganda especially, there is not much backlash for attacking and killing them.
As for the woman in Saudi Arabia who wants to wear a mini-skirt, she's not coming to Canada. She can't even drive to the airport or leave the house without a male guardian.
I agree, the girl from SA wearing a miniskirt isn't coming to Canada, and she is one of the many that gets lumped into the 'Muslims are bad' narrative. And sure, not able to wear a miniskirt is pretty mild compared to other abuses women endure in SA - but the yearning and bravery I saw in this stuck with me.
Saudi Arabia is a dirt-bag country in so many ways that are so much worse than not being able to wear mini-skirts. There's apparently not much we can do about it.
SA is a dirtbag country and while we could do something about it, we'd rather have oil.