Recent attention from both ends of the political spectrum has focused on the efforts of the Harper government to safeguard the safety and human rights of lesbian and gay people around the world. I've commended Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird for taking the lead on this before, and without prompting. But what has been getting missed thus far are the underlying circumstances which make this a particularly difficult Gordian knot of diplomacy. The more we learn about political movements in Uganda, the more we realize that if we are forceful, we may actually be causing harm to that nation's LGBT people.

On Friday, Sun News commentator Brian Lilley interviewed Rob Anders, the Member of Parliament who has drawn condemnation for conflating transsexual and transgender people with sexual predators in a petition he has been circulating on his website, and to at least one church in his riding. In "Children's bathroom bill reaches Parliament Hill," both doubled down on conflating trans people with sexual predators, and suggested that granting human rights inclusion will somehow enable and legally absolve predatory acts.  Anders claims there is "all sorts of examples of this going on."  Which is news to anybody else.

Rob Anders is on a mission. Hot on the heels of having to halfway apologize for alleging that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair drove former NDP leader Jack Layton to his grave, Anders is now sending at least one church (possibly more) a letter asking them to petition MPs to oppose Bill C-279, which would (in its current form) extend human rights protections to transsexual and transgender people. You'd almost think he needs an easy deflection, and trans people are the punching bag du jour.

The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform has been sending its New Abortion Caravan from the B.C. coast to Ottawa -- arriving in Toronto on Wednesday, where protesters attempted to deface the graphic posters on the truck using a coathanger. While the second hour of debate for Stephen Woodworth's attempt to push Parliament to investigate ways to criminalize abortion (M-312) has been pushed back to the fall, and looks destined to fail, that hasn't stopped the far right from mobilizing efforts across the country to change the social conversation on the topic.