Ad in National Post Criticized as Homophobic

What, the one that said the Ontario sex education curriculum is tricking kids into believing they're gay? No, it COULDN'T be that one...

The National Post, Canada's leading right-of-centre daily newspaper, printed an ad today that called on the Ontario government to stop teaching children about homosexuality and transgendered people because it's "corrupting" children. And now the folks at Gawker are more than a little ticked off that their neighbours to the north would let an such an ad run in their papers. Among the ad's claims is that the Ontario curriculum is "confusing" kids into thinking that they might be gay or transexual or two-spirited, because, as the folks at Gawker point out, being gay or what have you is obviously a choice that kids make when they're in elementary school. While many papers across the country declined to run the ad, paid for by a Christian right-wing group run by Charles McVety, somehow the Post let it get through their rigid editorial process, as the paper is now saying it will investigate just how a full-page ad in the 'A' section of the paper one week before an important provincial election slipped by the guardians of good judgment. While free speech is fine and everything, the ad edges awfully close to hate speech, and at least skirts the already-pretty-loose standards by which the advertising industry governs itself.