Let's not be too hasty to get rid of group rights

Whoa! Even though I found the points that Mike Duffy raised during his interview with Mark Steyn last night interesting for how they display the Liberal Party's intellectual inconsistency, I hope that both Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn will not go overboard in defending individual rights to the total expense of group rights. That's not to say that there might be legitimate reasons for extending some of the human rights protections onto native reserves. But let's also think of the consequences of human rights commission's applications (and those of courts) to other groups--religions---and the damage these bodies have already caused religious freedom as both a group and an individual right.

Growing up in the United States with a default liberal mental programming, I used to rail against the concept of group rights, especially for how they played out in the Quebec language issue. And yes, some of the ways that Quebec's language laws have been implemented have been ridiculous and deserving of the lampooning they have received from Steyn, Mordechai Richler and others.

But as I have come to understand better the group rights as understood through Catholic teaching and seen how human rights complaints have been used to undermine the ability of confessional Christian schools to impose behavior codes on their faculty and staff, I have changed my tune.

A strict interpretation of individual rights---where there is only the individual against the state--is a dangerous notion. That means that all intervening institutions that provide a bulwark against state power are stripped of their collective rights. Already, the same-sex marriage law in Canada has stripped the biological family of its rights by removing biologically-based designations such as mother and father and replaced them with a social construct: "legal parent" in all the consequential amendments of other laws pertaining to marriage.

Thus, as McGill professor Douglas Farrow has argued, (especially well in his book Nation of Bastards) the state now defines an institution that existed prior to the state. The state can now determine who has the rights to a child. It can now determine who then becomes the "legal parent." It is no longer a given that the biological parents have that inherent right. Watch for the rise of "children's rights" that the state will increasingly defend against parents who argue for the prior right to control the education of their children. Watch for more and more state interference with the role of the family in nurturing and raising children.

Religious freedom is also at stake. A narrow notion of individual rights sees religion as a private matter. Believe what you want, but keep your public professions of faith out of the public square. Freedom of religion, however, is also a group right. People should have the freedom to assemble, to worship, to choose their religious leaders and practices without having some human rights commission or court coming in to determine which practices are okay or not---unless they clearly violate the Criminal Code, such as female genital mutilation, or threats to kill those who convert to another faith. This notion of religious freedom is rapidly being eroded as well. I do not want some human rights commission telling me which part of the Bible is okay for me to read. Courts should not be telling Catholic high schools that they have to allow a gay student to bring his male date to the prom, or determining whether a Catholic bishop's pronouncements on faith issues have more or less weight than those of say a Catholic teacher's union.

I don't want some human rights commission coming into my church to tell us that we have to hire a priestess because our traditional view of the priesthood runs afoul of some human rights commission's definition of the equality of women. I don't think the present unisex, "gender-is-a social construct" view that prevails in Canada properly reflects the complementarity of the sexes. There are deep theological reasons for an all-male priesthood. I don't want some ignoramous Christianophobic bureaucrat deciding these matters for my religious group. Thus, I disagree with the Alberta Human Rights Commission's hearing the complaints against the Calgary Imam who complained against Ezra. That is just as serious and dangerous an overreaching into the arena of religious freedom as their investigation of Ezra is a breach of freedom of speech and of the press. If there are Criminal Code violations at the mosque then and only then should the state interfere.

As for the group rights of francophone speakers? I respect the rights of franchophones to protect their language. It's tough to work out the balance between group rights and individual rights. It takes philosophically grounded thinkers. Alas, our law schools are preparing people who perfect technique at the expense of wisdom.

In our Christian tradition, we have come to see that there is both the individual and the group. We are all individually made in the image of God, but we are also part of the Body of Christ, a unity. That's why there is such beauty and richness in the Christian conception of rights that will be lost if we define them down to merely individual rights, or merely group rights. In the Muslim world, the notion of individual rights is not developed. Group rights trump everything. That is equally dangerous. We have both in our Western heritage.

The Liberal Party has not always gotten this right and there has been a great ideological inconsistency in how they have applied these principles. But the libertarian strains in the Conservative Party will not do these principles any justice either. Let's not exclude Edmund Burke in our headlong embrace of John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism.

Woe to us when we see only individual rights and all the intervening institutions have been dismantled and undermined. Who will then protect the individual from the crushing power of the state? When families have become a social construct and whatever we "choose" at any moment, who is going to be responsible for raising and nurturing children to be virtuous, self-governing members of society? Enter massive state daycare programs, mandatory illiberal indoctrination to sexual dogmas and the elevation of tolerance as the virtue that trumps everything else. When religions have been banished to the sidelines, what institutions will help families to stay intact, promote the kind of sexual restraint that families need to flourish. Who will make sure that men stick around to be good fathers to their offspring? I fear that soon, if present trends continue, that it will be considered hate speech to publicly state that sexual activity should be confined to heterosexually married couples.

About a year ago, I did a long piece on Stephane Dion after he became Liberal leader, looking at what Catholic voters might like or dislike about him. Some Catholic thinkers had some deep reservations about his narrow conception of rights. Here is an excerpt where I quote McGill religious studies professor Daniel Cere:

Cere also sees Dion as in “lockstep” with the Trudeau legacy left by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The charter, however, Cere said is a “thin document” that does not go “far enough in the robust conception of rights that grounds the Catholic tradition.”

“His [Dion’s] position is so grounded in an individualistic conception of rights,” he said. “That kind of conception can be corruptive of forms of communal identity – family, religion or nationality.”

The Catholic tradition sees human rights grounded in an authentic conception of the human person that recognizes the communal dimensions of family, social and national identities, he said.

“I don’t think the Catholic community can feel completely comfortable with the Dion vision,” he said.

Cere is especially worried about religious freedom, especially the rights of religious institutions to hold views that are inconsistent with so-called charter values. He warned that the individualistic notion of rights is increasingly narrowing the conception of religious freedom to freedom of conscience even though the Charter and the courts recognize both conscience rights and religious freedom.

Luc Gagnon, editor of the French-language conservative journal Égards and president of Quebec Campagne-Vie agrees.

“He’s in the same line as Chrétien and Martin but worse, because Martin was a serious Catholic, and that placed some limits on his liberalism,” he said. Gagnon fears that Dion will go even further not only in the separation of church and state, but also in the separation of morality and politics.

Gagnon fears that the next “right” that might be championed is the “right to die.”

I fear that on the other side of the aisle, there is also a similar shrinking conception of rights.