I had no idea there were so many right-leaning columnists and activists in Canada who cared so passionately about human rights, and the freedom of Christians. That must be the case, because it has been impossible to pick up a newspaper or look at social media in the last few days without seeing outrage and anger at the government’s reforms to the summer jobs program.

It’s all largely a sham of course, just a convenient vehicle to drive at Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. The premise is that Ottawa’s reform of the summer jobs program discriminates against Christians.

In fact, it’s a reaction to the revelation that sizable amounts of public money were being given to militant anti-abortion groups across Canada, some of which describe women’s choice as murder, compare abortion to the Holocaust, and put leaflets with bloody, graphic pictures on them through people’s doors.

To prevent this, the government inserted a new statement in the application form, stating: “To be eligible, the core mandate of the organization must respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”

It’s not quite as draconian as critics have been making out, and there’s something else here. Many of us would like to see abortion rates reduced, but still believe that women’s choice is a fundamental right and that “safe, legal, and rare” is a pretty noble aspiration. We can support this text without rejoicing at the idea of abortion; or is it that some of the groups involved want abortion to be criminalized? I can tell you from extensive personal experience that they do, even in cases of rape and incest.

Of course there are far more moderate organizations that are caught in the middle of all this, and that’s a problem, but we must define who the real discriminators are. Opponents of the government have singled out the abortion issue, but many, if not most, of these same groups would not hire someone who was in a same-sex relationship.

In other words, young LGBTQ2 people — those most at risk of persecution, suicide attempts, and depression — will be told by those complaining of the unfairness of the new policy, that they are not acceptable as employees, and this policy often extends to straight people living together outside of marriage.

They often have what are known as “morality clauses” to which they demand signatures, and I for one have been fired from a major evangelical media organization because of my support for equal marriage. So it’s not quite as simple and linear as some would have you believe.

Then there is consistency. In 2010 Stephen Harper’s government removed $7 million in funding from KAIROS, a Christian aid organization representing 11 major churches. The Conservatives claimed it was because they were reforming their foreign aid approach, but it soon became public that it was actually because they thought, wrongly, that KAIROS supported boycotts of Israel.

The Harper government also removed funding from 14 women’s groups that were pro-choice, and to Canadian organizations that included abortion as part of their maternal care policy in the developing world, even though these were often life-saving procedures. I suppose that hypocrisy shouldn’t surprise us.

What does surprise, and disappoint, are how so many conservatives are playing the Christian card, and portraying the Liberals as oppressive. These same accusers have often been silent over the years when social program are trashed, inner-city education reduced, homelessness explained away.

These are the genuine Christian issues. Abortion isn’t really mentioned in The Bible, and when there is a reference it’s vague and about God’s communal plan rather than abortion as we know it today. Poverty, refugees, and the marginalized are constants however, and Jesus seldom shuts up about them!

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Frankly, the government has been a little clumsy in all this, and played into the hands of those who care far more about scoring points than preserving freedoms. Nobody, however, is arguing that conservative Christians shouldn’t be allowed to oppose abortion and LGBTQ2 equality, just that financing them to do so is going too far.

Michael Coren is a Toronto writer.