OTTAWA—A conservative women’s group has slammed Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird for defending gay rights on the world stage, saying his views are at odds with Canadian values and even his own Conservative party.

In a sharply worded news release Wednesday, REAL Women of Canada took aim at Baird, saying the minister has abused his cabinet post “to further his own perspective on homosexuality.”

“He has certainly been an activist in Canada and abroad on this issue. He’s just put it out front and foremost,” Gwendolyn Landolt, national vice-president of REAL Women, said in an interview.

Their criticism is linked to Baird’s defence of same-sex rights in places such as Uganda and most recently Russia, which is under fire for a new law that criminalizes the “propagation” of homosexuality and gay rights to minors, and outlaws gay rallies and the use of the media and Internet to promote gay causes.

Baird revealed last week that Canada has been working for months trying to convince Russia not to implement the law. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Baird said the “mean-spirited and hateful law” is an “incitement to intolerance.”

“And intolerance and hate breed violence,” Baird said, noting that Canada was “deeply disturbed, deeply concerned” about the controversial legislation that has sparked protests.

But Landolt suggested Baird was meddling when he raised such concerns.

“It really is offensive,” Landolt said Wednesday. “The issue is really why is he interfering in a sovereign country’s legislation? He really has no business to do that.

“I don’t want other countries to get what we have here where people’s religious values and traditional values are being pushed aside and giving homosexuals priority,” she said.

“According to Mr. Baird it’s a protection of human rights but it’s not universally accepted. It’s not a Canadian value,” she said.

The organization describes itself as a “pro-family conservative women’s movement . . . Our common bond is our belief that the family is the most important unit in society.”

The same news release also says that “homosexual activists” have become a “tyrannical minority.”

Baird spokesperson Rick Roth said the foreign affairs minister speaks for the “vast majority” of Canadians when he discusses the “promotion and protection of human rights.”

And he said Ottawa was taking “principled positions to promote important issues to promote freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

“Canada believes that the criminalization of homosexuality is wrong, as is the suppression of fundamental rights like freedom of expression and freedom of speech,” Roth said in an email. “The expression of these rights should not be met with the death penalty, nor violence.

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“This is not a left versus right issue. This is a position that is supported by a vast majority of Canadians,” Roth told the Star.

The government has offered to meet with the organization to explain the government’s position opposing the criminalization of homosexuality.

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