Boissoin is being hauled before the Human Rights Commission to answer to a complaint filed by Darren Lund, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Lund made his complaint after Boissoin published a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate, in which he denounced homosexuality as immoral and dangerous, and called into question new gay-rights curriculums permeating the province’s educational system.
In that letter to the editor, Boisson lamented that “Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.”
Boissoin, who is himself no stranger to the dangers of homosexual and bi-sexual activity, since many of the youth he works with fall into that category, repeatedly expressed his concern that behaviour that is dangerous, and sometimes fatal, is being presented as normative and even healthy to the most impressionable. “I was just writing a letter to the editor, to the heterosexual population,” he says, “saying this is something to be very, very concerned about.”
For expressing that view, however, Boissoin has been called a “bigot” and a “hate-mongerer”, and worse. Darren Lund has likened the young pastor to Terry Long of Aryan Nation, a local white supremacist, and James Keegstra, a holocaust denier.
Should Boissoin lose the hearing with the Human Rights Tribunal, he will be forced to pay $7000 in fines. $5000 will go to Darren Lund personally, and another $2000 will go to the rabidly pro-gay-rights group EGALE Canada, which has received large sums of money in the past from the federal government for its court challenges. In addition, Lund has requested that Boissoin be forced to apologize to his readers in another letter to be published in the Red Deer Advocate. Boissoin, however, says that he will not pay those fines, nor will he apologize, even should that mean prison.
He is not hopeful about the outcome. A few days ago, he says, he met with an officer of the Human Rights Commission, who indicated that in publishing his letter Boissoin had gone against the “position” of the Commission. “According to what they have decided is the law, I will probably be found guilty,” he admits.
Nevertheless, the pastor is carefully preparing for the hearing, asking a number of witnesses to come forward and speak on his behalf. “I feel almost too humble to say this, to be honest with you,” he says about those who are willing to come out in his defense, “but they say they’ve worked with me, and they’ve seen my devotion to teens, bi-sexual and homosexual alike, and they’re hurt that I can be fined, and potentially, if I don’t pay these fines, I can be imprisoned.”
“I’m ok with whatever the outcome is,” he concludes. “I’m just going to trust God. I’ve been through a lot in my life…I’m just going to trust Him. He may have me speaking just before the panel and judges and it may touch someone’s heart and minister to them. I’m just going to go in humble, and leave the outcome to God.”
Canada lost free speech a long time ago. Like a frog slowly boiling in water, nobody seemed to notice.
Unfortunately, the USA appears about to be next.
It's really getting bad in Canada, if this fellow goes to prison for telling the truth. I'm surprised that this is happening in Alberta. They've been conservative in the past, haven't they?
Is there a defense fund or some place to contribute for this guy?
Addressing important issues is a difficlut task these days. All manner of societal entities have decided to impose their lack of comrehension skills on others. For instance the internet was going to broaden our ability to discuss and correct all manner of societal ills. Now we find that a number of imporant issues are out of bounds due to sensitivities. The more things change...
Shocking. Can he kick this up to Canada's Supreme Court? Maybe the Santa Clauses will take pity on him.
This piece is breathtaking it its pathos. BREATHTAKING. And it fills me with crushing sadness for mankind.
Love the sinner; hate the sin.
I don't know if Canada's Liberal government is too far gone to make distinctions like this, but it worked with the last Liberal I talked to. He accepted that view.
Since the pastor has worked with homosexuals and shown his love and compassion for them, can he not show that to the comission?
He could separate out the disease from the victim. All he's hating is the disease, not human beings. (I realize that there has to be a modicum of intelligence on the part of the Commission in order to grasp this fact)
I even love some Liberals, but I hate their disease.
Bless his heart.
Actually, Boissoin did not publish the letter, merely he wrote a letter to the editor. The paper is the one who published it. Should they not be the guilty party here?
Man at his worst. The Church at its finest.
If your thoughts aren't government-approved, you're not allowed to think them or express them. If you do, you'll be fined or jailed.
It is amazing to me that the Canadians have allowed their country to come to this.
We have so much common history with the Canadians.
How do two apples fall so far from the same tree?
Canada and Australia seem much more alike than Canada and the US, but geography and history would seem to suggest otherwise.
My guess would be that because the US went to war with England to secure liberty and wrote a constitution to guarantee that liberty against encroachment by the government that we Americans are much more reluctant to surrender those hard won liberties to an invasive government.
We have much in common with Canada up as time goes by I wonder will grow together, become more alike or grow apart become more alien to one another.
I believe that we the Freepers of the US can not imagine becoming like Canada. To have a Human Rights Commission force to self-censor our letters to the editor is unimaginable.
The history of court judgments in the last fifty years is troubling. Two Supreme Court judges one way or the other is about all that stands between We The People of the United States and a new world order with the Thought Police of 1984 and the Firemen of Fahrenheit 451 telling us how to live our lives, what we can say and write and what we should think.
The roots of this New America are deeply imbedded in the colleges and universities to which we send our youth today. Will our future leaders be indoctrinated at these institutions to view the greater good is that we should all be made to hold our tongs so that none are offended and that liberty all should be sacrificed for sensibilities of a few.
I hope that at least a few on this noble forum will fight to ensure that if Canada and the United States do grow together that they grow toward a future of liberty.
YEC INTREP
BUMP for Monday.
Anyone, especially a conservative or libertarian, who argues that gay marriage is not a big deal, needs to tell me how we're going to avoid this crap here. After all, Canada has a written constitution.
O, Canada...
How the mighty have fallen.
How the great have been laid in the dust.
And do you now follow after them?
See, your wound is fatal,
Your lifeblood pours into the Earth,
Your strength ebbs and the bonds of your spirit are loosed,
Yet, you say, "I have no need of a physician,
I am whole, full of life and in good health."
But you are blind,
You are naked,
You are filthy,
You are corrupt,
You are in the very throes of Death,
Oblivious of your perilous state
Bellowing out some lyrical inanity about your glory,
Like the tortured singing of a besotted drunk,
More's the shame the body corporate dies not alone.
O Canada,
O Canada,
Your passing shall we mourn,
Yet our distance we shall keep,
Lest your disease infect us, also,
And your fate become our own.
Farewell, our once-great and sometime friend.
As you tread now the dark'ning halls in this stilling hour,
Farewell.
Later pingout.
Esther, if you can ping me to relevant articles that would be appreciated, thanks.
Whoever thought government-sanctioned persecution of Christians would occur so close to home?
This guy could be in deep trouble. If they don't get him for gay-bashing, they could get him for trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Are we moving toward a society where only the gays have free speech and only the non-Christians freedom of religion?