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Fathers Battling Injustice
Lobby Group Is 50% Lesbian
Posted By: Steve Martin
Date: Tuesday, 21 March 2000, at 7:46 a.m.
Tuesday, March 21, 2000 http://www.canoe.com/TorontoNews/ts.ts-03-21-0010.html
Lobby group is 50% lesbian
Sexual make-up of NAC members revealed in study
By MARK DUNN, OTTAWA BUREAU OTTAWA -- The National Action Committee on the Status of Women has finally come out of the closet about who its members are: At least half are lesbian.
An e-mail obtained by The Sun and confirmed by a NAC official said the lobby group speaks for 740 groups representing 3 million women and "at least 50%" are lesbian.
NAC has never revealed who it represents, but has for the first time undertaken a study of who its members are, spokesman Mariam Abou-Dib said yesterday.
REFUSED STANDING
The sexual make-up of the group was revealed after "the largest women's organization in Canada" was refused standing at the Commons justice committee, where extending benefits to same-sex couples is being studied.
"It gets worse when REAL Women is invited and NAC is not," president Joan Grant-Cummings says in the e-mail.
"Equality-seeking women deserve a chance to express their opinions and concerns on this important question of human rights, and, instead, Canadian women will be grossly misrepresented," she wrote.
FUNDS CUT OFF
The federal government used to fund NAC to the tune of about $200,000 a year -- about 25% of its budget -- until it pulled the plug in 1997, leaving the group to find other sources of revenue.
NAC did get a chance last week to make its views known at the Commons justice committee after crashing the meeting and sharing time -- five minutes -- with the National Association of Women and the Law. REAL Women -- which supports traditional marriages -- opposes same-sex benefits legislation.
A spokesman for REAL said her group has sensed for years that NAC was not speaking on behalf of the average Canadian woman, although it says it does.
"That's not very representative of the general population," Diane Watts said about the revelation that the majority of NAC's members are lesbians.
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