Supreme Court of Canada rules that politically incorrect speech is a criminal offense

Political map of Canada

Canada is hostile to free speech, as shown in the recent Supreme Court decision.

Excerpt:

Canada’s top court has released a unanimous decision today that critics say has struck a monumental blow against freedom of speech, opinion, and religion across the country. The court ordered the defendant, a Christian pro-family activist with a reputation for intense activism, not only to pay a fine, but also to pay court costs which could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[...]In Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, the Supreme Court decided that born-again Christian William Whatcott was guilty of hate speech for distributing flyers to neighborhoods in Saskatoon and Regina in 2001 and 2002. While the flyers used vehement language against homosexual practices and the homosexual agenda, they did not directly attack homosexual persons.

[...]The Court focused on Whatcott’s main argument, namely that he loves homosexuals with a brotherly Christian love, and it is only their sexual activity that he denounces.

But the Supreme Court found that with regards to hate speech, the distinction between ‘sin and sinner’ no longer applies.

“I agree that sexual orientation and sexual behaviour can be differentiated for certain purposes,” the Court stated. “However, in instances where hate speech is directed toward behaviour in an effort to mask the true target, the vulnerable group, this distinction should not serve to avoid s. 14(1)(b) [the hate-crime clause of the Code].”

“Courts have recognized a strong connection between sexual orientation and sexual conduct and where the conduct targeted by speech is a crucial aspect of the identity of a vulnerable group, attacks on this conduct stand as proxy for attacks on the group itself,” the Court stated.

The Court ordered Whatcott to pay the Human Rights Commission’s legal fees and to pay $7,500 in compensation to two homosexuals who were offended by his flyers.

Gwen Landolt, national vice-president of REAL Women of Canada, called the ruling “very depressing” and “bad news”.

[...]“On the one hand they’re saying, ‘Oh, no, no, no, we’re not really infringing on freedom of religion and freedom of speech and freedom of opinion’, but in fact, what they say is not what they’ve done,” she said in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com.

Next time we have an election, can we vote in favor of free speech? I don’t agree with anything Whatcott did – form or content. The man is a fool. But I can easily see how this ruling could be used to silence reasonable speech that disagrees with homosexuality and gay marriage on secular grounds. The motivation of these judges is to silence speech critical of the gay agenda, and we should all be concerned about that. They pick these kooks like Whatcott to attack because they won’t get any opposition from normal people. But later you’ll find out that these legal precedents will furnish the foundation for eliminating free speech altogether. It’s happened before.

Apparently, there is some effort to repeal section 13 in Canada, which is the part that criminalizes speech deemed offensive by the political left. That might affect future rulings of the Supreme Court if it is made clear that the right to free speech is absolute.

Related posts

• Free speech under attack from the secular left in the UK and Canada
• By repealing section 13, Canada takes a baby step toward freedom of speech
• Free speech hero Mark Steyn reflects on the demise of Section 13 fascism
• Canadian conservatives pass bill to repeal Section 13 speech code
• Youtube reverses decision to ban video critical of gay activism in Canada
• Alberta judge rules that it is legal to disagree with homosexuality
• Conservative MP’s bill to repeal Section 13 moves to committee
• Conservative MP introduces bill to abolish Section 13 speech code
• Ezra Levant on the new Sun News television network
• What happens when same-sex marriage conflicts with religious liberty?
• Human Rights Tribunal finds Catholic school board guilty of discrimination
• Saskatchewan planning to abolish its Human Rights Tribunal
• In Canada, Blazing Cat Fur is being sued for linking to Mark Steyn
• Canadian Human Rights Commissions continue war on Christians
• Video of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn testifying against Canadian HRCs
• The Conservative Party takes up free speech in British Columbia
• The Conservative Party takes up free speech in Ontario
• Video of Ezra Levant discussing free speech on the Michael Coren show
• Video interview with Ezra Levant by the libertarian Fraser Institute

Filed under: News, Bill Whatcott, Canada, Communism, Fascism, Feminism, Free Speech, Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Tribunal, Leftism, Nanny State, S. 13, Section 13, Socialism, Speech, Speech Code, Supreme Court, The Left, Thought Crime, Thoughtcrime, William Whatcott

How would legalizing gay marriage affect your marriage?

Here is a comprehensive backgrounder published in National Review.

It answers the following questions in detail:

1. Why focus on opposing the recognition of same-sex partnerships as marriages? Aren’t widespread divorce and single parenting the real problems?
2. Why worry so much about policy?
3. Why wouldn’t you want to recognize committed, monogamous same-sex relationships?
4. How would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages hurt marriage?
5. Isn’t the fight against redefining marriage a losing battle?
6. Why limit freedom in the name of sectarian values?

Here’s the detail on number 4:

Recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages requires replacing one basic vision of what marriage is (in our law, and hence in our mores, and hence in practice) with another vision of marriage. The new vision is one that equates marriage with the much broader category of companionship. Companionate bonds have great personal value, but they can’t ground in a principled way the norms that set marriage apart.

To the extent that marriage is misunderstood, it will be harder to see the point of its norms, to live by them, and to encourage their strict observance. And this, besides making any remaining restrictions on marriage arbitrary, will damage the many cultural and political goods that first got the state involved in marriage. Here is a summary of those goods.

Real marital fulfillment. No one acts in a vacuum. We all take cues from cultural norms, many of which are shaped by the law. To form a true marriage, one must freely choose it. And to choose marriage, one must have at least a rough idea of what it is. The revisionist view would harm people (especially future generations) by distorting their idea of what marriage is. It would teach that marriage is essentially about emotional fulfillment and cohabitation, without any inherent connections to bodily union or procreation and family life. As individuals internalized this view, their ability to realize genuine marital union would diminish. This would be bad in itself, since marital union is good in itself. It would be the subtlest but also the primary harm of redefining marriage; other harms include the effects of misconstruing marriage.

Spousal well-being. Marriage tends to make spouses healthier, happier, and wealthier. But what does this is marriage, especially through its distinctive norms of permanence, exclusivity, and orientation to family life. As the state’s redefinition of marriage makes these norms harder to understand, justify, and live by, spouses will enjoy less marital stability and less of the psychological and material advantages that flow from it.

Children’s well-being. If same-sex relationships are recognized, not only will the stabilizing norms of marriage be undermined, but the notion that men and women tend to bring different gifts to parenting will not be reinforced by any civil institution. Redefining marriage would soften the social pressures and lower the incentives — already diminished these past few decades — for husbands to stay with their wives and children and for men and women to marry before having children. All this would harm children’s development into happy, productive, upright adults.

Friendship. Misunderstandings about marriage will speed our society’s drought of deep friendship, with special harm to the unmarried. The state will have defined marriage mainly by degree or intensity — as offering the most of what makes any relationship valuable: shared emotion and experience. It thus will become less acceptable to seek (and harder to find) emotional and spiritual intimacy in nonmarital friendships. Instead of being seen as different from marriage and therefore distinctively appealing, they will be regarded simply as less. Only the conjugal view, which gives marriage a definite orientation to bodily union and family life, preserves a horizon richly populated with many types of association and affection, each with its own scale of depth and specific forms of presence and care.

Religious liberty. As the conjugal view of marriage comes to be seen as irrational (“bigoted”), freedom to express and live by it will be curbed. Several states already have forced Catholic Charities to choose between giving up its adoption services and placing children with same-sex partners, against Catholic principles. Some defenders of marriage have been fired or denied employment or educational and career opportunities for publicizing their views. If marriage is redefined, believing what virtually every human society once believed about marriage — that it is a male-female union — will be seen increasingly as a malicious prejudice, to be driven to the margins of culture. The consequences for observant Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others are becoming apparent.

Limited government. The state is (or should be) a supporting actor in our lives, not a protagonist. It exists to create the conditions under which individuals and our freely formed communities can thrive. The most important free community, on which all others depend, is the marriage-based family; and the conditions for its thriving include the accommodations and pressures that marriage law provides for couples to stay together. Redefining marriage will further erode marital norms, thrusting the state further into leading roles for which it is poorly suited: parent and discipliner to the orphaned, provider to the neglected, and arbiter of disputes over custody, paternity, and visitation. As the family weakens, our welfare and correctional bureaucracies grow.

People on both  sides of this issue should be able to articulate the reasons for each point of view. The article is a good place to find the case for natural marriage.

Related posts

• Frank Turek: is “equality” the issue in the same-sex marriage debate?
• Childless single adults “co-parenting” children in loveless partnerships
• Dawn Stefanowicz explains her experience being raised by a gay parent
• What is marriage? A lecture with Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George
• Growing up with two lesbian mothers: a child’s perspective
• Mark Regnerus and the progressive war against science
• More social scientists stepping forward to defend Regnerus study
• Do children of gay parents perform as well as those of heterosexual parents?
• Are gay relationships typically stable and monogamous?
• The American Psychological Association (APA) on lesbian and gay parenting
• Do children raised by gays and lesbians do as well as those of married parents?
• New study finds that children do best in traditional mother-father families
• Obama openly supports gay marriage: 48 hours after top gay donors cut off funding
• Democrat introduces bill to defund adoption agencies that favor married couples
• A secular case against same-sex marriage

Filed under: News, Bi-Sexual, Child, Children, Children's Rights, Civil Society, Court, doption, Family, Gay, Gay Marriage, Gay Parenting, GLBT, Health, Lesbian, LGBT, Marriage, Natural Marriage, Parenting, Prop 8, Proposition 8, Same-Sex Marriage, Supreme Court, Traditional Marriage

Free speech under attack from the secular left in the UK and Canada

Dina tweeted this article from the UK Telegraph by Christina Odone.

Excerpt: (links removed)

Tomorrow the High Court will decide whether a Christian group that helps gays “overcome” their sexual inclination has the right to advertise its services. You may remember that Stonewall, the gay rights group, was allowed to run the slogan: “Some people are gay. Get over it.” on London buses. But when Core Issues Trust (CIT), a Christian group, decided to counter with a poster that read “Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!” Mayor Boris Johnson vetoed their campaign.

If the High Court ruling goes against CIT – as I fear it will – the judgement will prove a setback for free speech, as well as religious freedom. As Philip Johnston writes in today’s Telegraph, ”Just as gays are entitled to extol their own sexual identity, so people who take another view, on whatever grounds, should be allowed to say so, shouldn’t they?”

The problem, as Johnston notes, is that “you might think it is right to muzzle such people because, in reality, they just don’t like gays and are hiding their disapproval behind a spurious religiosity… In some cases that may be true, but it is not the issue here: this is about free speech.”

Our newfound intolerance worries me – and I write more on this on my own website, Freefaith.com. All Britons, and not just those of faith, will be scared of speaking against the prevailing culture.  We’ll watch our words and our backs, terrified of breaking the unwritten code upheld by the guardians of our illiberal establishment. The punishment is not just derision and verbal abuse; in some quarters expressing the wrong sentiment will mean I’ll get a criminal record or a fine. I might even have a minister call for my boss to fire me, as happened to Julie Burchill when she wrote something recently that offended the transgender lobby.

That used to happen, on a regular basis, to journalists living in Stalin’s USSR. Any expression of subversive tendency (ie one that did not tally with the regime’s own viewpoint) could end a hack’s career forever. Or land her in Siberia. Even Lynne Featherstone cannot dispatch her victims in this way, yet. But if tomorrow’s court hearing about the Christian advertising campaign goes against them, I will feel the cold winds of Siberia blowing.

It’s not just in the UK, but Canada, too. The Supreme Court just decided a case where a foolish Christian (the kind I am constantly deriding on this blog) decided to push Christian moral views with Bible verses and vulgar insults in public. The Supreme Court decided that his free speech was criminal. (H/T Keith)

Excerpt:

In an unanimous decision today in the case of Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, the Supreme Court of Canada struck a blow against freedom of speech.

[...]CCF Executive Director and lawyer Chris Schafer said, “The Supreme Court missed an excellent opportunity to rein in the power of various human rights commissions and tribunals to censor the expression of unpopular beliefs and opinions”. Schafer added, “While the Canadian Constitution Foundation does not take any position on the content of the materials distributed by Mr. Whatcott, it believes that it is the right of every Canadian to freely and peacefully express themselves without fear of censorship or persecution by the state. Free expression is the lifeblood of democracies and all forms of expression, especially the offensive kind, needs to be protected. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court disagrees.”

I think this Canadian story shows the importance of Christians being intelligent about how they argue against things they oppose. Quoting Bible verses on placards and being insulting is not the same as doing a PhD and then publishing quality arguments and evidence for your point of view. All this offensive person achieved was handing the left the perfect case for them to restrict free speech for everyone. Christians need to be smarter than that, and to know that being persuasive means being articulate and intelligent. Only a complete idiot would quote Bible verses to people who do not accept the Bible, instead of using academic books and academic research. And yet our pious pastors frequently prepare lay Christians to do nothing but quote the Bible to non-Christians, so it is understandable. We need to get better at making cases.

Note that these anti-free-speech laws were passed by the Labor Party in the UK and by the Liberal Party in Canada. It’s the secular left that restricts speech, not the religious right.

Filed under: News, Censorship, Free Speech, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Tribunal, Intolerance, Supreme Court, Tolerance

Obama suffers the most disastrous week of his Presidency

A must-read re-cap from the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

Consider:

• Last Friday, Mr. Obama wandered into the killing of Trayvon Martin. Aided by his ignorance of the situation, knee-jerk prejudices and tendency toward racial profiling, Mr. Obama played a heavy hand in elevating a tragic situation in which a teenager was killed into a full-blown hot race fight.

Americans, he admonished, need to do some “soul-searching.” And then, utterly inexplicably, he veered off into this bizarre tangent about how he and the poor dead kid look so much alike they could be father and son. It was election-year race-pandering gone horribly wrong.

• By the start of this week, Mr. Obama had fled town and was racing to the other side of the planet just as the Supreme Court was taking up the potentially-embarrassing matter of Obamacare. While in South Korea he was caught on a hidden mic negotiating with the president of our longest-standing rival on how to sell America and her allies down the river once he gets past the next election.

• Meanwhile, back at home, the Supreme Court took up the single most important achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency and, boy, was it embarrassing. The great constitutional law professor, it turns out, may not quite be the wizard he told us he was.

By most accounts, Mr. Obama and his stuttering lawyers were all but laughed out of the courthouse. They were even stumbling over softball questions lobbed by Mr. Obama’s own hand-picked justices.

• Mr. Obama closed his week pulling off a nearly unimaginable feat: He managed to totally and completely unify the nastily-fighting Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Late Wednesday night, they unanimously voted — 414 to zip — to reject the budget Mr. Obama had presented, leaving him not even a thin lily’s blade to hide behind.

So, in one week, Mr. Obama got caught whispering promises to our enemy, incited a race war, raised serious questions about his understanding of the Constitution, and then got smacked down over his proposed budget that was so wildly reckless that even Democrats in Congress could not support it.

It’s important the Obama’s secular leftism be put on display.

Filed under: News, Barack Obama, Budget, Democrat, Democrat Party, Leftism, Liberal, Obamacare, Russia, Supreme Court, Trayvon Martin

Fascism: Canadian Supreme Court overturns right to religious liberty

Map of Canadian Provinces

UPDATE: Please vote “no” in this poll if you think tthat the Supreme Court is wrong.

Life Site News announces the death of religious liberty in Canada.

Excerpt:

In what’s sure to come down as a devastating blow to parental freedom, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rejected this morning the pleas of a Christian family to have their child exempted from the Quebec government’s mandatory ethics and religious culture course.

“Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J,” the justices wrote in the majority decision.

The high court’s ruling, released at 9:45 Friday morning, comes in the case of S.L. et al. v. Commission scolare des Chênes et al., which involved a Catholic family who took their school board to court after it refused to grant their child an exemption from the province’s controversial ethics and religious culture course (ERC).

The course, which seeks to present the spectrum of world religions and lifestyle choices from a “neutral” stance, was introduced by the province in 2008 and has been widely criticized by the religious and a-religious alike. Moral conservatives and people of faith have criticized its relativistic approach to moral issues, teaching even at the earliest grades, for instance, that homosexuality is a normal choice for family life.

Despite provincial legislation allowing for exemptions from school curriculum, the Ministry of Education has turned down over 1,700 requests, and had even moved to impose the course on private schools and homeschoolers.

Critics warned that a ruling against the family would have frightening consequences for parental authority and risked emboldening provincial governments across the country as they move to impose their own versions of “diversity” education.

To me, what this means is that in Canada, the state decides what children will believe, not the parents. The state will tax parents in order to pay for government workers and government programs. And the state will use these government entities to make the children believe in the state’s values.

What is ironic to me is that Canadians likely voted to grow government. There are a lot of people in Canada who think that it is a good thing for government to help the poor. Many, many economically illiterate Christians also voted to grow the size of government over the last few decades. They voted to empty their own pockets by raising tax rates. They voted to entrust secular leftist bureaucrats with more and more power. They voted to let the state educate their children with public schools and government-run day care. They voted to let government provide health care instead of letting individuals earn and save to pay for it themselves. They voted for taxes that are so high that women cannot afford to stay at home and homeschool their children – they have to work and hand their children off to strangers.

It is very important for Christians to understand that if they believe that it is government’s job to redistribute wealth from rich to poor, then they voted for this. If you believe in “social justice” then you are opposed to religious liberty – and the free practice of Christianity itself. Many, many Christians who don’t study economics and don’t get their economic views from the Bible think that it is a good thing to vote for bigger and bigger government funded by higher and higher taxes. Christians in Canada seem to be proud of their self-inflicted secularism. They think that taxpayer-funded abortions and taxpayer-funded sex changes are a great idea – because “health care is a right”.  They think that taxpayer-funded abortion and taxpayer-funded sex changes are authentic Christianity, supported by the Bible.

I have had Christians in Ontario tell me on Facebook that they are pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family but that they favor allowing a secular government to force all taxpayers to pay for abortions and sex changes. That is what Canadian Christianity amounts to, in many cases – because they don’t understand economics, and what economic policies promote and secure rights – including the right to religious liberty. The right to religious liberty is only guaranteed when government is limited and the free enterprise system is strong. We need to stop deciding our views of politics and economics based on feelings and peer pressure and the desire to appear “compassionate”. We need to ask what the Bible says, and study economics in order to find out what guarantees the liberty we need to live out authentic Christian lives.

I think it’s time for Christians in Canada to get serious about applying the Bible to all of life – including economics.

Filed under: News, Bullying, Canada, Canadian, Catholic, Choice, Christian, Christianity, Coercion, Conservative, Day Care, Diversity, Education, Fairness, Fascism, Freedom, Indoctrination, Judges, Justice, Liberal, Libery, Monopoly, Multiculturalism, Persecution, Public School, Quebec, Redistribution of Wealth, Religious Liberty, Roman Catholicism, School, Secular Leftism, Secularism, Social Justice, Spread the Wealth Around, Supreme Court, Wealth Redistribution