Canadian Government Issues New 'Two-Men-Kissing' Dollar Coin

P. Gardner Goldsmith | April 26, 2019
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Here’s a story that might prompt some of your leftist friends to argue before they get the deeper point.

The Royal Canadian Mint just revealed its new move into Social Justice Warriordom. It’s…

The “Two Men Kissing” Dollar coin.

Indeed. The Royal Canadian Mint called it a “key milestone for lesbian, gay, transgender, queer and two-spirited people.”

The coin is one of those modernistic “it could be one person, but is really two” images that is, in fact, two men, kissing.

And it is being released by the official government coin maker to celebrate, as CTV reports, “50 years of progress for LGBTQ2 Canadians,” since, according to some, homosexuality was “decriminalized” by the Canadian government in 1969.

This might please many people who have worked hard to see more societal acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships in Canadian culture.

But, even as they might applaud this new political move, others point out that homosexuality was not decriminalized by Canada in 1969. As Tom Hooper notes for the CBC:

No laws were repealed. The reforms that were passed had no practical effect. And criminal charges for consensual gay sex among adults increased in the decades after 1969, dramatically.

Others might ask why a gay romantic or sexual orientation is being promoted on state-controlled currency at all.

Someone I know asked whether Canada has, in addition to its One Dollar “Loonie” (with a loon on the obverse) and Two Dollar ”Toonie” (a bi-metal coin), another coin with a man and woman kissing, or some other combination. And then she asked why kissing is depicted at all.

So the coin creates controversy, not necessarily because there are lots of supposedly bigoted people out there who dislike gay and lesbian people, but because they feel it inappropriate for the state to be involved with promoting any kind of sexual or romantic relationship orientation at all.

This is currency. In Canada. The Canadian government's 2016 C-16 law has already mandated that people working for government offices or for businesses regulated by the government (that’s pretty much all) must use the pronouns that gay, lesbian, trans, queer, or “other” demand they use, or be fined or jailed. What happens now, if one doesn’t want to take the new coin; will one be in violation of the law?

And, by the way, it takes money to print these coins. The Canadian Mint already stopped printing their pennies in 2013, because the metal in the coin and the effort to make it cost more than the value of the coin itself (like the US penny and nickel). Should taxpayers have to shell out money to create coinage they don’t like, for whatever reason?

How about… No?

The debate over this will undoubtedly be depicted by the media as one between Paleolithic trogs who won’t open their minds to “inclusiveness” and noble folks who have fought for “equality”. But, as indicated above, there are other things to consider, the deepest of which is thrown into our faces every day, in the US and in Canada.

How many times have people wanted the face of a particular politician stripped off a piece of currency?

Lincoln? Hamilton? Jefferson?

How many atheists aren’t fans of “In God We Trust” being on the currency they use?

I once saw the word “irony” written in marker across the forehead of Andrew Jackson on the $20 Federal Reserve Note (aka “the Twenty Dollar Bill). For those who aren’t familiar with the story, Jackson ended the Second Bank of the US, which had been incredibly inflationary. Sadly, when he sanctioned state banks to start, he mandated that they buy state bonds, and fourteen of seventeen states soon defaulted on the bonds. One wonders how Andy would feel about it.

One wonders how American Indians feel about his face being on the bill.

The point is that government control of currency, or the government handing a license to a central bank to create it, means that citizens are forced to accept it, no matter what.

Atheists. Straight. Gay. American Indians. Everyone.

And that’s not freedom. It creates, as I often note, the tragedy of the Commons, making everyone argue over what should or should not be on it, and forcing all the losers in the debate to have to use it – and pay for making it – regardless.

In a private currency world, with private banks (really private, not sanctioned by the polis) holding reserves of precious metals, consumers could frequent the banks they trusted and liked. If a bank wanted to push a particular agenda, people could choose to use or not. They could turn to alternatives.

And this would not just allow for people to make their own determinations about what they might want on their money, it would prevent the currency from becoming devalued due to inflation, or the expansion, of the supply of money.

With government-run currency, not only does one have to worry about what political ox is being gored, one must factor into his consumption, investment, and savings decisions how much the central authority is expanding the money supply, which will destroy the buying power of every unit of currency.

So, while some Canadians might applaud the new decoration on the obverse of their coin, others have more important and deeper considerations on their minds. Those have to do with the nature of the state itself, how it pits people against each other, and how it prints money to fund itself, destroying the buying power of our own earnings.

Celebrations of the superficial blind people to the destructive power of the state.

Don’t look for people in power to mention it.

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