My Own Hate Crime

I'm jumping on the bandwagon à la Ezra Levant. As a show of support for Stephen Boissoin, as well as defiance of a kangaroo court ruling, I also hereby publish what the Alberta HRC has declared hateful. At The World Truths, Boissoin himself gives the letter some context (see the second comment).

The following is not intended for those who are suffering from an unwanted sexual identity crisis. For you, I have understanding, care, compassion and tolerance. I sympathize with you and offer you my love and fellowship. I prayerfully beseech you to seek help, and I assure you that your present enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied. Many outspoken, former homosexuals are free today.

Instead, this is aimed precisely at every individual that in any way supports the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s. I cannot pity you any longer and remain inactive. You have caused far too much damage.

My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume. With me stand the greatest weapons that you have encountered to date - God and the "Moral Majority." Know this, we will defeat you, then heal the damage that you have caused. Modern society has become dispassionate to the cause of righteousness. Many people are so apathetic and desensitized today that they cannot even accurately define the term "morality."

The masses have dug in and continue to excuse their failure to stand against horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality. Inexcusable justifications such as, "I'm just not sure where the truth lies," or "If they don't affect me then I don't care what they do," abound from the lips of the quantifiable majority.

Face the facts, it is affecting you. Like it or not, every professing heterosexual is have their future aggressively chopped at the roots.

Edmund Burke's observation that, "All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," has been confirmed time and time again. From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.

Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, 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.

Your children are being warped into believing that same-sex families are acceptable; that men kissing men is appropriate.

Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex and at the same time being told that it is normal, natural and even productive. Will your child be the next victim that tests homosexuality positive?

Come on people, wake up! It's time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn't rooted in protecting homosexuals from "gay bashing." The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.

The homosexual agenda is not gaining ground because it is morally backed. It is gaining ground simply because you, Mr. and Mrs. Heterosexual, do nothing to stop it. It is only a matter of time before some of these morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.

If you are reading this and think that this is alarmist, then I simply ask you this: how bad do things have to become before you will get involved? It's time to start taking back what the enemy has taken from you. The safety and future of our children is at stake.

Rev. Stephen Boissoin

Dear Mr. Blaikie

Dear Mr. Blaikie,

I would like to thank you for your work in parliament, even though we disagree on many issues.

I write to you to voice my concern regarding the Human Rights Acts in Canada and the Commissions that enforce them. From a purely practical perspective, the commissions have clearly demonstrated that they are out of line. The March 25 hearings of the federal Commission and the recent tribunal investigation of Maclean's highlight the fact that these commissions, though not dealing with actual criminal actions, are nevertheless more powerful and less limited than real courts and investigators. It is unconstitutional and in total disregard of the rights and freedoms of our legal heritage that non-crimes can be investigated and prosecuted with looser limits on search and seizure and with looser (if any) rules of evidence and procedure than actual crimes can be. This is not even to discuss the total one-sidedness of Commission proceedings.

The possibility - as in the cases of Levant, Steyn, and even Lemire - that my political thoughts could subject me to prosecution, even though they are not criminal, is despicable in a liberal democracy. The possibility - as in the cases of Brockie, Owens, and Boissoin - that my bona fide religious convictions are subject to the approval of the government or its agent, even though they are not criminal, is frightening.

Your website has a link to an October 2007 article in the United Church Observer. In the interview, you state that your opinion that secular fundamentalists are misguided in wanting to "rule out religious talk in the public domain", while religious fundamentalists need to be "challenged about how to speak about political matters from a faith point of view". In general, I agree with this sentiment. But I submit to you that it is neither the right nor the responsibility of the government to censor or to sit in judgment of either political or religious public discourse.

I urge you, with many other constituents and Canadians, to support Dr. Keith Martin's efforts to repeal subsection 13(1) of the Human Rights Act, and further, to encourage the government to consider scrapping the Commissions and Tribunals altogether.

I eagerly await your response. Thank you.

Freedom vs. Happiness?

Lorne Gunter: Freedom isn't failing us — we're unhappy because we're no longer free. A great read that puts the smaller battles into perspective.

Both groups (and Prof. Gorton, too) make a common mistake, though: They equate choice with freedom. The two are not one and the same.

It's entirely likely that as the range of our choices has expanded in the past five decades, along with our ability to afford those choices, we have become less politically happy because our core freedoms have been undermined by a growing, rapacious state...

... Some of these may be good ideas on their own, but it is the added element of state compulsion that makes doing the sensible thing a freedom-robbing affront.

The way I see it, we have to take yet another step back. Gunter quotes Benjamin Disraeli as having said that "an Englishman did not need a lot of laws because he was prepared to do the proper thing of his own accord." I think this is instructive in another sense than Gunter takes from it.

Freedom is not itself an end; it is a means to an end. If we don't understand what freedom is for, why should we be concerned about giving it up? I wonder whether people are so quick to allow themselves to be put under the dominion of the state because they are incapable of handling freedom. Could it be that the citizen's apathetic shirking of responsibility is the most to blame for the state's gathering of more and more power?

The Apostle Paul wrote:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1)

But that is not the end of the story.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (vs. 13)

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. (vs. 16-18)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.(vs. 22-23)

Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars...

... And "gender equality" is a black hole. I was about to link to a great column by Lorne Gunter, when I came across this nail-on-the-head offering from Karen Selick about Stephane Dion's promise, if elected, to create a "Commissioner of Gender Equality."

But, as Selick points out, no matter how hard the social engineers try, they just can't convince women to act or think like men, something for which most of us are quite thankful.

The authors acknowledge that Canada already provides what they call "formal equality," or equality of opportunity. In other words, our laws treat men and women equally. But equal treatment, they claim, has not turned out to yield "the expected results."

That depends, I venture to suggest, on what results you expected. If you expected women en masse to behave exactly like men en masse merely because there were no legal obstacles to their doing so, then of course you would be disappointed. The biological differences between men and women make such an expectation ridiculous. There is ample scientific evidence of differences between male and female brains that accounts for the tendency of men to excel in — and therefore cluster in — certain occupations, while women excel in and cluster in others.

I wonder with Selick whether there would be "equal opportunity" for the position of "Commissioner of Gender Equality."

Both "gender" and "equality" are very loaded words in our culture. Whenever I hear them together, I'm reminded of a book by Elizabeth Elliot called The Mark of a Man. In her discussion of biblical masculinity and femininity, she begins by describing the ways in which men and women are equal. For instance, they are equal in being created in the image of God; in being called to serve Him faithfully; they are equal in being given the grace of salvation. But it's a pretty short list.

Then Elliot describes the many ways in which men and women are different, especially from a biblical perspective. We are so different that she speaks of a "glorious inequality," one in which we serve God and each other best. Selick aptly describes the practical and logical fallacies of the feminist ideology; Elliot shows that we are best off when we follow the Maker's instructions.

What's that Sucking Sound?

Maclean's Magazine is on trial this week before British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal. Coverage of the proceedings can be found at Andrew Coyne's blog. The complaint centers around an issue of Maclean's that discussed the future of the West in relation to Islam and Muslims. At the heart of the complaint is the work of Mark Steyn, in particular his book, America Alone.

Opponents have declared that Steyn's book is "Islamophobic", an attack on Muslims, an attempt to portray all Muslims as terrorists. But the book is not firstly about Muslims or Islam. The key point of Steyn's thesis is that many Western nations have become cultural, moral, and demographic vacuums. European nations, as well as Canada, are unwilling to defend the fundamental values and freedoms in and for which they were constituted. They are committing societal suicide. Thus, America Alone is first an indictment of the West.

Steyn reasons this way: The West does not have a strong cultural will or demographic strength and longevity. This creates a vacuum. What fills the vacuum? The easy answer is radical Islam, which has both demographics and cultural will aplenty.

I agree with Steyn's assessment of the West's predicament. But the root of the problem is deeper, as Steyn hints with many references to multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is a mindset that is part of a larger worldview - that of moral relativism. In this worldview, there are no absolutes; thus, no basic standards by which to judge anything; thus, no judgments. It is moral relativism that simultaneously causes the West's general reluctance to confront real enemies, and inability to defend its own freedoms and interests.

The issue of freedom of speech and the HRCs is far from unrelated. When there are no absolutes, what is your standard for testing people's thoughts, words, actions? In our times that standard has become feelings. If thoughts, words, or actions cause feelings to be hurt - or, in the case of Canadian Human Rights Acts, if they can potentially remotely possibly cause feelings to be hurt - then forget about truth, fair comment, and other inconveniences; these must be stopped.

The same vacuum that is giving the upper hand of the future to radical Islam is blinding many Canadians to the HRCs' egregious assault on real human rights that are based on timeless absolutes. That sucking sound? That's the vacuum created by a lack of absolutes.

The CPAC Debate

Ezra Levant and Concerned Citizen discuss the panel discussion on the HRCs at the Canadian Association of Journalists conference in Edmonton. I was able to watch all 80 minutes, but Levant also has a few shorter clips of the action.

Ian Fine was pretty brilliant in the way he avoided questions - I don't know why parliament did this or that, We just apply the law. His attempts to appear reasonable - We understand that there is concern, We appreciate that there is another take on the issue, the Supreme Court and Parliament agreed that we needed more protection against hate [italics are my paraphrases], etc. - were severely undermined by his statement of support for more laws against hate.

The big catch to me is that it is not enough just to look at a law and ask what is wrong with it in a legal sense, i.e. the letter of the law. The law, in this case the Human Rights Act, also has to be examined in a practical sense - that is, how the law is being used. In the case of Human Rights Acts, the law is being used in a way that was never intended, which the Supreme Court in the Taylor case did not anticipate - very much against the spirit of the law. When the law is used to prosecute political discourse and victim-less non-crimes, you know there is a problem with it.

The other thing is this idea that hatred needs to be stamped out by the government. This is a way of thinking that is very common, but diametrically opposed to the way our Dominion was conceived. That is the key point, that - as Levant and Martin argued - ideas should be tested, evaluated, and tossed out or retained in the court of public opinion, not by the government. When people seek to have arguments silenced, it is an indication that they have no defense against the arguments.

On Free Speech and Censorship

Army to Remove Memorial Sign and Crosses From Chapel in Kosovo Camp

Army officials say they are only following regulations, but their plans to remove a memorial to a U.S. chaplain at a camp in Kosovo have shocked and saddened his widow.

Elizabeth Oglesby said she was "a little bit sad" when FOXNews.com told her a sign honoring her late husband, Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Gordon Oglesby, would be removed from the North Chapel at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

The sign, as well as three crosses, are being removed to put the chapel in line with Army regulations, said Lt. Col. William D. Jenkins of the 35th Infantry Division's Kosovo Force 9...

...Army regulations prohibit chapels from being "named for any person, living or dead, or designated by a name or term suggesting any distinctive faith group," Jenkins said.

"This is not a new regulation and exists to protect the free exercise of religion of all soldiers," Jenkins said.

But this post isn't about a U.S. Army chapel or chaplain.

Google has made news in pro-life circles about its refusal to display anti-abortion ads, at least under some circumstances where pro-abortion ads are not subject to the same ruling.

"For many people, Google is the doorway to the Internet," Christian Institute spokesman Mike Judge told the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. "If there is to be a free exchange of ideas then Google cannot give special free speech rights to secular groups whilst censoring religious views."

This post isn't about Google or abortion either.

The Conservative government's Bill C-10 had many in the film industry up in arms in March. The bill would deny tax credits to films produced in Canada that include graphic sex or violence.

Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said she's concerned that the bill could allow the tax system to be used as a "de facto censor of film and video production..."

NDP Leader Jack Layton accused the government of deliberately burying the part of the bill that allows government to withhold funding from films that it considered distasteful.

"It strikes at the heart of free speech for people trying to produce films," Layton said.

As you can imagine, this post isn't about film tax credits either.

This post is about censorship and free speech. The above three news items are not. What they have in common is a misconception about what free speech and censorship are about.

How, pray tell, was any soldier's free exercise of religion threatened or hindered by the crosses or the sign? It wasn't, of course - it's politically correct hypersensitivity to assert otherwise.

For the record, I am sympathetic to the pro-life Christian Institute, and I support challenging Google's decision. But Google's refusal to run its ad is not an attack on freedom of speech. The Christian Institute is free to run its ad in many other formats and places. Google can't take that away from them, and it certainly isn't by way of rejecting the ad.

Similarly, Bill C-10 is not censorship. Censorship is preventing the film from being produced; lack of a tax credit is not truly such a prevention. That the film needs a tax credit to be viable indicates not a lack of government support, but a lack of financial backing, which the government is not preventing them from obtaining.

This brings us full circle to the 4 Osgoode Hall Law students who have been decrying Maclean's censorship as an attack on free speech. The number of times they have been published making these claims should be enough to prove that they are quite free to speak.

Private organizations - Google included - should be allowed to make private decisions on the content and extension of their services. (This is not to say that they should not be challenged on bad decisions.) This is the very stand taken by Maclean's in its HRC case.

But governments are quite another thing. While Bill C-10 is not censorship, the film tax credit business is, in my opinion, not something the government should be in to start with. In this sense, I agree with Matthew Johnston's argument to this effect at the Western Standard blog.