National Post
Saturday, July 01, 2000


Separating the wheat from the gaffes


A gaffe, in Michael Kinsley's shrewd definition, is when you tell the truth. Yes, but not always.

True, many statements by public officials that the media call "gaffes" turn out, on closer examination, to be merely impolitic -- incautious, overly blunt, but on the whole tenable, even defensible positions. Often the supposed gaffe is the result of misquotation, lack of context or even someone else's paraphrasing.

On the other hand, the mere fact that a statement outrages or deeply upsets others is not, in itself, evidence of its worth, or of the boldness of the speaker. The opinion voiced may be truly vile or absurd, needlessly hurtful and recklessly phrased, and it is no defence to charge those who object with "political correctness."

What, then, are we to make of Stockwell Day's career as a public speaker? There's no denying he has a history of controversial statements on sensitive matters: If, as his handlers protest, he has not made a point of raising his decidedly conservative views on social issues during the current campaign, he has never been shy about it in the past. Nor will his opponents be in the future.

But do these count as gaffes? Do they show him to be courageous and candid, or careless and callous? Is he an extremist? Or merely principled? And has he changed over the years? The following is a guide to some of the former Alberta cabinet minister's most quoted statements. For ease of reference, they have been rated out of five stars, with one star representing "contentious, but within bounds," and five stars reserved for out-and-out "he said that?" howlers.

¥ "God's law is clear. Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school. If we ask for [the education minister's] approval, we are recognizing his authority." (1984) An odd statement from a candidate for public office. Except he wasn't a candidate then: He was working as a lay preacher at the Bentley Christian Centre, a private religious school using the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which had come under criticism from a government commission. Mr. Day has since observed that "when I moved into government ... your constituency broadens and you represent the views of those who also want to see a very excellent public school system." Still, few operators of religious schools would maintain they were beyond temporal authority. Rating ***

¥ "God, as a god of love, warns us about things that can be detrimental to us. One of the things God warns about is sodomy." (1986) An early sign of his interest in homosexual themes, the "warning" the first-term MLA from Red Deer North here refers to is AIDS. Anal sex, at least without a condom, unarguably puts one at greater risk of contracting AIDS than other types of sex, though that is as true for heterosexuals who indulge in the practice. But it's a stretch to interpret Scripture, even those passages that inveigh against "vile affections" and "men with men working that which is unseemly" as a health advisory. Rating **

¥ "In looking at the problem of drug abuse, we tell students to just say no to drugs; we don't show students how they can boil needles before they inject themselves." (1987) Mr. Day was drawing an analogy to sex education, another frequent theme, particularly the teaching of "safe sex" unaccompanied by exhortations to abstinence. Mr. Day would prefer a "values-based" sex ed, "where you go into detail about function and so on but you also add cautions about the consequences of casual sex." The allusion is inflammatory, but the point is fairly held, and widely shared. Rating **

¥ "I want to know how many women in Alberta are physically battered and not just insulted by their husbands. If we talk insulted by their husbands, then I'm afraid that I'm guilty from time to time of abusing my wife." (1987) Mr. Day was reported to have "raised the hackles of women's groups" for questioning a poll purporting to show that one million Canadian women had been abused "physically, emotionally, sexually or economically." This is fair game. The tendency of activists-cum-researchers to inflate the data by means of absurdly elastic definitions of "abuse" is well known. Rating *

¥ "The thinking is, if you can cut a child to pieces or burn them alive with salt solution while they're still in the womb, what's wrong with knocking them around a little when they're outside the womb?" (1988) Many pro-life advocates worry that abortion, by devaluing the unborn child's claim to life, may put society on a slippery slope, desensitizing us to the taking of life in other circumstances. But neither reason nor evidence supports Mr. Day's prediction that liberalized abortion would lead to a rise in child abuse. Rating ****

¥ "Most people agree that we need to have protective legislation for reasons of religion, ethnic origin and gender. But they feel no group should have special protective legislation based on sexual activity, whether it is a group of heterosexuals or homosexuals or sexual abstainers." (1989) This is a statement characteristic of Mr. Day's opposition to including sexual orientation among the prohibited grounds of discrimination in human rights laws. His reasoning: that this involves "special" protection for an "activity," rather than equal protection for an identifiable group. Elsewhere, Mr. Day has expressed the opinion that "homosexuality is a choice." The evidence is not yet conclusive on whether homosexuality is genetically or environmentally determined, but it defies reason to think it is something one could choose, or, given the marginalization and ridicule gays commonly endure, that anyone would. Rating ***

¥ "If you look at somebody becoming sexually active in Grade 8, by the time they hit Grade 12 they've got a 100% chance of that condom failing on them." (1990) Mr. Day's thinking here appears to have been based on a supposition that condoms have a failure rate of as high as 25%. His facts may be debated, but his math is quite wrong. Rating **

¥ "People need to realize that disposing of relationships, just like with an environmental issue, isn't necessarily the best way to go. There could be toxic byproducts ... The single family runs a much higher chance of the children in the family being involved in juvenile crime, substance abuse, suicide rates and psychological problems. That is the straight statistical reality. We're not blaming one family over another. We're saying 'Look folks -- here's the reality.' " (1992) A typically bizarre analogy off the top, which unfortunately makes him less credible on the underlying point. As Dan Quayle found, it is not enough for those who enter the emotional minefield surrounding this issue to have the facts on their side: They must also show they have considered the issue carefully, and that they sympathize with the parents every bit as much as they deplore the situation they are in. Rating **

¥ "People [are] saying that they were going to tell their families to get handguns and put them in their house because the government refused to do anything about people bursting into people's homes and in many cases killing them." (1994) Defending homeowners' right to own handguns for personal defence would merit one star. Alarmism over the incidence of homicidal home invasions raises it to two. But suggesting the government "refuses" to do anything about this nonexistent threat earns the coveted troisieme etoile. Rating ***

¥ "I have always been honest and open on the broad question of taxpayer-funded abortions. Use taxpayer dollars only for cases which are medically life-threatening. During a media scrum, your reporter interjected, 'What about rape and incest?' I ignored his interruptions and kept to the broad issue of 'medically life-threatening' and never once referred to rape and incest." (Letter to The Edmonton Journal, 1995) So, does Mr. Day believe that taxpayers should fund abortions where the mother becomes pregnant by rape or incest, but where her life is not in danger, or not? Here's another question: Of the roughly 115,000 abortions performed every year in Canada, how many were to end pregnancies caused by rape or incest? Rating *

¥ "People like myself say, 'Fix the problem. Put him in the general [prison] population. The moral prisoners will deal with it in a way which we don't have the nerve to do.' " (1997) Huh? Even Ralph Klein had to disavow Mr. Day's unique advice for dealing with serial killer Clifford Olson. A classic. Rating *****

Several themes emerge from this brief review. One, Mr. Day is a social conservative, through and through. Two, he is inclined to express his views in strong language, using colourful analogies and occasionally suspect statistics. Three, he is sometimes so unable to contain himself that he speaks without thinking. That's when the gaffes start.

Quotes compiled by Christopher Tenove and Lindsay Beck