Posted on 03/30/2004 4:14:23 PM PST by MegaSilver
This week, the Senate is expected to pass an amendment to the Criminal Code that will limit religious freedom and freedom of expression in Canada. Bill C-250, a private member's bill introduced by Svend Robinson, MP for Burnaby-Douglas, will make it a crime to "communicate statements in any public place" that "wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group," including gays. Observant Christians, and others who view homosexuality as immoral, worry the new law will serve to ban the Bible, the Koran and other holy texts as hate literature and criminalize sermons that condemn homosexuality as sinful. Given the ambiguous wording of Mr. Robinson's bill and the recent willingness of Canadian courts and human rights tribunals to shove aside religious liberty whenever gay litigants complain the dogma offends them, C-250's opponents are right to be worried. Whatever one thinks of gay rights or same-sex marriage, it is unconscionable in a democracy that one side should succeed in using the law to shut up the other.
Originally passed by the Commons last fall over the objections of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and other religious organizations, C-250 died in the Senate when Parliament prorogued in December. The Liberal government of Paul Martin, however, consented to have the law reintroduced where it left off when Parliament reconvened last month. Senators hurried to get it through a series of "public" hearings almost no one knew about. The committee gave most opponents just three business days' warning to appear, then lumped them together on unwieldy panels and allowed each of them 10 minutes or less to speak. Several witnesses said afterwards they were certain senators had made up their minds in advance and merely wanted it to appear as though they had consulted Canadians.
It is true, as Mr. Robinson and other backers of the bill point out, that the Criminal Code was amended when C-250 was before the Commons to exempt from hate crimes prosecution opinions "based on a belief in a religious text." As the CCCB points out, though, the amendment does not adequately address fears that an activist judge somewhere will convict a strident priest or pastor for counselling against homosexuality from the pulpit.
Judges and human rights commissioners have demonstrated repeatedly that laws to protect religious freedom are not worth the velum they are printed on. In an infamous 2002 case, a Saskatchewan Queen's Bench judge upheld a human rights ruling that equated the Bible with hate literature. Hugh Owens, a strident evangelical, ran an ad in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix citing, but not quoting, four scriptural passages that declare the sinfulness of gay and lesbian sex. Next to the four citations, Mr. Owens placed two stick men holding hands. Superimposed on them was a circle with a line through it. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruled, and a federal judge concurred, that the "forbidden" symbol by itself was not hateful to gays, but "when combined with the passages from the Bible ... would expose or tend to expose homosexuals to hatred or ridicule." According to the reasoning of the Saskatchewan judge, had Mr. Owens been brought before him under C-250, he likely would not have been able to avail himself of the religious exemption, and so might now have a criminal record courtesy of his Christian beliefs.
Mr. Owens' case does not stand in isolation. Scott Brockie, a Christian with a print shop in Toronto, was forced at about the same time to do printing for a gay and lesbian advocacy group, even though he claimed that doing so would force him to compromise his religious convictions. A board of inquiry for the Ontario Human Rights Commission declared that while Mr. Brockie was "free to hold his religious beliefs and to practise them in his home, and in his Christian community," in public, the rights of gays trumped his religious freedom. And last month, a B.C. court upheld the suspension of Chris Kempling, a high school counsellor, not for anything he did or said at school, but rather for writing letters to the editor of his local newspaper questioning the naturalness of the homosexual lifestyle.
All of these cases occurred before C-250 will make speaking out against homosexuality a crime. Now that the law is changing, many religious Canadians will likely simply shut up, lest their religious convictions land them in jail. This is a sad day for Canada: The enshrinement of gay rights is taking place at the expense of expressive freedoms that civilized nations have taken for granted for generations.
The Christians and Jews might take this sort of oppression from Ottawa, but your typical Moslem settler in Toronto is more likely to fight back. That will give them an edge in the culture wars.
Hope Canadians like veils.
Aside from their gun laws (and Canada is every bit as bad), I would be heading to Australia. Better weather, less bitter population.
While we are at it, throw in Kalifornistan.
In any case, are we really surprised? The world's going to heck in a hand-basket and if things keep going, it'll be a civil war all over again. The only good news is that we're going to win because we have all the guns.
What will happen in the future remains to be seen. At the moment however, you will find it is easier to expouse a Christian point of view (and receive less derision for doing so) in Canada than here in the U.S., government actions notwithstanding.
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