You know you are backwards when...

Here in Canada we like to think of ourselves as very progressive on social issues and we love to hurl abuse at the President of the USA in that regard.  We are looking pretty foolish these days when not only have individual US states legalized marijuana but the President himself admits to using it and says that it isn't a good idea to use it but it is obviously safer than alcohol.  Even Forbes (not generally known for supporting the hippy stoners, one should note) ran a piece about how The President forgets to lie about pot and the Prohibitionists are outraged.

It is so amusing to watch the folks who want to keep marijuana illegal reach for more and more ridiculous claims.  Marijuana is dangerous!  Totally, if you get a few hundred kilos of it, bale it up, and drop it off of a upper storey onto a person's head they will probably die.  Marijuana is bad for your lungs if you smoke it, just like cigarettes!  Yeah, because obviously people won't eat it, or vapourize it, or use a filter.  Particularly when big companies get involved they are going to produce easy, clean solutions for getting really damn high.

There is a bit of a disconnect between the governments and citizens of Canada and the USA at the moment.  Canadians generally sit far to the left of Americans in terms of policy but it seems like Obama is parking to the left of Harper.  Obama is much more of a hawk but that is because he can get away with it; Harper getting Canada involved in anything aside from peacekeeping is pretty much political suicide.  Obama too has deliberately spoken out in support of trans and gay rights too and Harper doesn't so much do that - presumably because he would happily roll things back to an earlier era in that regard but knows he lacks the political capital to do that.

The thing that really has me curious is how Harper will deal with the recent legal changes to prostitution in Canada.  He has a year to write new laws surrounding prostitution that are Constitutional but I suspect he will take the tactic of throwing his hands up in despair and verbally attacking the Supreme Court.  After all as long as he claims he can't do anything and that it is the court's fault that the nation is in moral decline he panders to the 'traditional values' crowd but doesn't actually raise the ire of progressive types.  It is a lot easier to be disgusted than actually wade in and deal with a regulatory tangle so I fully expect that will be his tactic.

The slow walk towards not ruining people's lives for their harmless personal choices continues.  In fits and starts, for sure, but onward it relentlessly grinds.  The millstone of getting high and hooking up, if you will.