It's midnight and no announcement

Will the Morgentaler announcement be made tomorrow AFTER the Governor General's public appearances?

Or has the announcement been postponed indefinitely? Stay tuned.

I'm hearing there are fears tomorrow's Canada Day events on the Hill would become a "spectacle" and that's why the announcement has been delayed. Thousands of angry phone calls might convince anyone that such an announcement on the eve of our national holiday would perhaps lend oneself to being booed on live television during the noon ceremonies on Parliament Hill, when Governor General and the Prime Minister will be there.

Of course there would be others jumping and cheering and leaping for joy. But that would be an unseemly spectacle, too, when you think of the two million or so abortions over the past 20 years. Can anyone, no matter what side of the issue they're on, think that's a good thing?

Actually, I haven't heard of calls to mobilize people to protest on the Hill. I've heard more deep sadness and plans to boycott the celebrations instead.


By the way, it is interesting to look at an Order of Canada medal.

The insignia of the Order is a stylized snowflake of six points, with a red annulus at its centre which bears a stylized maple leaf circumscribed with the motto of the Order, DESIDERANTES MELIOREM PATRIAM (They desire a better country), surmounted by St. Edward’s Crown.

That verse is from Hebrews 11:16. It goes like this:

But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

Sad how we have lost our country's spiritual underpinnings. Holy Innocents, pray for us.

And pray for Dr. Morgentaler.

Don't forget Fr. De Valk and Catholic Insight

Ezra Levant isn't going to. Neither should you.

He writes:

Maclean's magazine is enormous -- in size, in strength, in profile, in legal resources. And that is precisely why it was let go. It was such a big fish, it would have pulled the Bad Ship CHRC underwater, rather than be reeled in.

Not so with small fish like Fr. de Valk, so small he is being crushed by legal bills, so small my friend had not even heard of his case.

So small that the CHRC knows it can prosecute him with impunity.

So small that he shall not be afforded the politically-motivated "justice" meted out to Maclean's.

That's the problem here. That's why we can't let up. One of the fundamentals of the rule of law is that no-one is above the law, and no-one is below it.

The Canadian Human Rights Act is a bad law -- unconstitutional in its application, when tested against the Supreme Court's 1990 Taylor decision, that barred its application from political matters.

So Fr. de Valk should not be below the law.

But the CHRC thinks the law is good law, and so far, the Conservative government hasn't said otherwise. If that's the case -- and I submit it isn't -- then Maclean's shouldn't be above the law, by virtue of their wealth and power.

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if Maclean's Magazine did a big take out on Catholic Insight Magazine's case and Fr. de Valk?

Well when a Liberal blog reports this could it be true?

What role did Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin play in Dr. Henry Morgentaler's receiving an Order of Canada--still not officially announced. Maybe the award is being aborted as I blog this.
Aborting awards like this would be a good thing. Aborting human beings is not, as much as we might admire Morgentaler's perhaps misguided courage and compassion for women.

When you hear some of the same things from a Liberal blog then, hmmmm, maybe there's some truth? I don't know. James Curran writes:

This year's committee for the O of C consisted of 9 members. The vote favoured Dr. Morgentaler by a tally of 7-2. Justice Beverly McLaughlin apparently waived the usual unanimous vote rule for Dr. Mogentaler's nomination approval. Good for her. And, although I don't have a list of the members of the Chancellery, I do know that 2of them are reported to be the Clerk of the Privy Counsel and the Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage (possibly the two votes against).

Actually, the vote in question concerned the Advisory Committee, not the Chancellery, which is Rideau Hall secretariat that handles appointments. The Advisory Committee, which McLachlin chairs, is called for in the Order's constitution.

Now the Chief Justice playing a key role in getting a divisive politicized figure like Morgentaler Canada's highest honor would surprise me because it would be so appalling for a judge, especially the highest profile judge in the land, to behave like that. There is also a chance she is merely a ceremonial figurehead as committee chair. But her even being on the committee---whatever role she played, figurehead or not---poses big problems down the road for the perception of impartiality should an abortion law ever come before the Supreme Court of Canada. Maybe she will have to recuse herself from any abortion law examination.

Here are the names of some people on the Advisory Committee, helpfully supplied by the folks at 4MyCanada.

In our update late Saturday night we gave you action steps. Late last night we also tracked down the phone numbers of all those who are on the nomination committee, or affiliated. PLEASE take a couple minutes today to give these offices listed below a call and express to them disapproval of this decision. Let's jam their phone lines.

PHONE NUMBERS FOR THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS (ADVISORY COUNCIL) WHO PRESIDE OVER THE ORDER OF CANADA NOMINATIONS:


1) Chair of the Council:
Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., Chief Justice of Canada, 301 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0J1, Telephone: 613-992-6940


2) Clerk of the Privy Council:
Dr. Kevin Lynch, Clerk of the Privy Council, Langevin Block, 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A3, Telephone: 613-957-5400


Deputy Minister of the Department of Canadian Heritage:
Ms. Judith LaRocque, Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage, 25 Eddy Street, Gatineau, Québec, K1A 0M5, Telephone: 819-994-1132


3) Chair of the Canada Council:
Ms. Karen Kain, C.C., Chair, Canada Council for the Arts, 350 Albert Street, 12th Floor, P.O. Box 1047, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5V8, Telephone: 1-800-263-5588


4) President of the Royal Society of Canada:
Dr. Yvan Guindon, C.M., President, Royal Society of Canada, 170 Waller Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 9B9, Telephone: 613-991-6990
Prof. Yvan Guindon, c.m., Directeur, Laboratoire de chimie bio-organique, IRCM, 110, avenue des Pins ouest, Montréal (Québec) H2W 1R7, Téléphone: 514-987-5785


5) Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada:
Mr. Thomas Traves, Ph.D., Chair, Board of Directors, Ass'n of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 350 Albert Street, Suite 600, Ottawa, Ontario K1R 1B1, Telephone: 613-563-1236
Mr. Thomas Traves, Ph.D., President and Vice Chancellor, Dalhousie University, 6299 South Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4H6, Telephone: 902-494-2511


OTHER:
Ms. Sheila-Marie Cook, Secretary to the Governor General, Rideau Hall, 1 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A1Telephone: 613-993-8200

Ms. Emmanuelle Sajous, Deputy Secretary, Order of Canada Chancellery, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A1

I hear from another source that this last person, Emmanuelle Sajous, deemed to be "rising star" in the public service, could have and should have vetted this appointment as it has been policy in the past for the council to stay away from controversial, divisive appointments. Is there any more divisive issue than abortion?

Interestingly, Sajous did a stint at the Canadian Human Rights Commission! What an interesting crucible that must have been.

After working for a number of federal institutions including the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Commission, she joined the Privy Council Office in 1999 where she became Director, Leadership Development and Human Resources policy. In 2005, she joined the Office of the Secretary of the Governor General where she was appointed Deputy Secretary, Honours and Deputy Herald Chancellor.

I finally did get a call back from one of the very pleasant GG communications people and was told "No comment" about when or if or anything about any announcement.

Still no news. They must have underestimated the heat even on a holiday weekend.

Killing comedy in the name of human rights--Jonathan Kay

Jonathan Kay is on a roll with some good commentaries in the National Post.

I especially think this one on the comedian Guy Earle now facing a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for being unfunny in his response to hecklers at a Vancouver restaurant.

Now, granted, some of what Kay quotes recently deceased George Carlin as saying I find highly, offensive. I also worry Kay may have the humorless Darren Lund file a complaint against him along the lines of the complaint against Mark Steyn for quoting a nasty radical imam. But no way do I want to have government agencies governing what comics can say in clubs or what columnists write in newspapers. If the Post gets too racy or vitriolic for me I can always cancel my subscription. It's one thing if someone is your boss and calling you names, it's totally another if you've paid admission for "the edgiest show in town" or you have subscribed to a newspaper or magazine or clicked on a blog that you can always navigate away from.

Kay writes:

If the bureaucrats determine that a thoughtcrime has been committed, Earle could be on the hook for thousands of dollars. Or — since B.C.’s human rights tribunals, unlike real courts, can make up just about any punishment they want — he might be forced to avoid certain themes in his act, or even to write and perform gay-friendly jokes. (It’s theoretically possible that B.C.’s human rights commissioners could simply write Earle’s mandatory new jokes themselves: “Hey, did you hear the one about the two homosexuals who got married, and had children, and lived productive lives, and didn’t embody any funny stereotypes whatsoever? …”)

Human Rights mandarins posture as champions of “diversity.” But as this case illustrates, what they seek is actually complete conformity. Their dream is a whole society that, in every nook and cranny, adheres self-consciously to the same rigid, humourless orthodoxies that hold sway in their own circle of professional human-rights paper-pushers.

Normally socialized people — who live and laugh in the real world — recognize that society has different zones, each with its own code of conduct. If a politician or business leader said the sort of thing that Carlin or Earle did, his career would be over. And rightly so. But a comedy club isn’t a boardroom or Parliament building. When you pay your money to go see a modern stand-up routine, you’re on notice that the act likely will be vicious and corrosive. Since politically correct speech is so boring and unfunny, you’d probably demand your money back if it is wasn’t.

Normal people likewise recognize that the stereotypes and obscenity trafficked in comedy clubs are communicated for effect, not as a political message. Two generations after the (Carlin-led) mainstreaming of irony and counterculture, we all know that words change their meaning depending on where and how they’re uttered.

Which all reminds me of a blog post Kathy Shaidle wrote a while back about the blogosphere as a similar kind of zone or venue. Kathy and I are friends, but that doesn't mean I approve of everything she writes. Sometimes I find her posts offensive and I wish she would not say certain things because they make her come across as someone who is not like the person I know. But here she gives a great explanation of venue and persona. It might also explain why her readership is in the tens of thousands and mine is miniscule by comparison. She writes:

Blogging is the Final Frontier, the Wild West, likely the last new medium we will ever witness.

Perhaps a better analogy is a wildlife sanctuary or Yellowstone Park, but for speech.

I aim to try to keep it that way for as long as possible.

People are stupid. They do not understand the concept of venue, or medium, or as Rushdie calls it here, "form."

The fights between players in a pro hockey game would get them arrested in a bar.

The language the comic uses up on the stage would get him punched out were he to utter it just a few inches closer to the floor.

Had Avenue Q been staged without the "cover" provided by puppets, it wouldn't have been so widely accepted. Ventriloquist dummies and animation (think South Park) provide similar "cover", "twice removing" provocative speech from a blameable source and thus rendering it more palatable.

People also don't appreciate the concept of personae. Does any sane adult really believe that Don Rickles goes around talking like that in the supermarket, or that the Monty Pythons wear dresses and viking hats round the house or that Johnny Rotten still spits on people?

Alice Cooper golfs. Think about it.

The lack of sophistication of many of my critics on the Left of the 'sphere is what saddens me the most. (And on the Right, too. We have our share of young, idiotic unsophisticates and cowardly careerist hacks.)

Jonathan Kay on Dion's Green Shift

He writes:

The northern rebuff shows that — whatever one thinks of the economics behind the Green Shift — the politics are suicidal. A carbon tax may be politically palatable in a country such as, say, Denmark, a wealthy, high-tech, geographically compressed welfare state where regional differences are relatively minor and energy-use patterns are relatively uniform. But Canada is a very different beast. Depending on which province you live in, the high price of oil may be an economic godsend — or a catalyst for recession.

In our dozen biggest cities, public transportation and condo life are potential antidotes to carbon dependence. Everywhere else, it’s not. That’s why any carbon tax scheme — even one, like Mr. Dion’s, which offers token tax baubles to rural residents — is sure to be divisive.

That in itself wouldn’t be a big problem for Mr. Dion if he could make the electoral numbers add up. But it’s not clear who — if anyone — is going to get excited about the Green Shift. People who live in energy-producing areas — Alberta, Saskatchewan, parts of Atlantic Canada — are obviously opposed. So, too, are northerners. In the big cities of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, voters are more inclined toward armchair environmentalism. But most of these people now live in the suburbs, and commute from their big carbon-hungry homes in cars powered by $1.35/litre gasoline. What’s in the Green Shift for them?

Scary Scaramouche

Gee, the "remedies," the euphemism for the punishments doled out by human rights tribunals are going to skyrocket in Ontario. Not only that, the government is going to offer free legal help to complainants and let them go directly to the tribunal. This is supposed to speed everything up.

Gee, I thought Barbara Hall's drive by verdict on Maclean's was pretty fast! Maybe the next "improvement" will be getting rid of the tribunal altogether.

I mean, really if truth is no defense, laws of evidence don't apply, and you are guilty with no possibility of proving you are innocent of likely subjecting someone to hatred or contempt in the distant future, why bother with the tribunal either? Just give everyone a Go Directly to Jail card. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Scaramouche has a scary fisking of the news story about these latest developments here.

She writes:

This kind of stuff never “improves.” It only gets more overweening, more intrusive, more ridiculous.)

Various Morgentaler wierdness

Well--I was told on good authority the Morgentaler announcement was coming at noon. Then at 2 p.m. I have been trying ALL DAY to get a media spokesperson from the Governor General's office to call me back to no avail, even tried cell phones of a usually most helpful, responsive group of communications officers. Nada. I'm getting annoyed.

4MyCanada just released some phone numbers for people to call. Someone told me she tried the GG's secretary, who is on the committee that made the choice.

"I called," said said and was told, "We're an agency, we're handling all the calls."


"Government House is shut down, not even available to the public."

She said she was told by the person answering the phone that they're getting lots of calls, everyone's upset and angry. No one is supporting this.

I've also told some MPs are trying to stop this.

Now I hear the announcement is going to come at the end of the day in hopes that the furore will die down by Wednesday.

Fat chance.

It's true--expect Morgentaler announcement at noon

I have confirmed that the rumours are true: Dr. Henry Morgentaler is getting an Order of Canada and the news will be released at noon today.

Someone blind copied me on her letter to the Prime Minister concerning awarding Canada's highest honor to Dr. Henry Morgentaler.

She wrote:

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

It is not often that I feel it is my civic duty to write to you, but this is such a time.

I am writing to protest the conferring of an OC on Dr Henry Morgentaler.

It is inappropriate to sully the Order by what amounts to approval of his ghastly career- the aborting of babies. His career has consisted of a multitude of crimes against humanity. My child is one of his victims; I have had to come to terms with my terrible decision to go to his Montreal office in 1969. That event will haunt me for the rest of my days. I know that what I did was very wrong... I wonder how different my life would be today if I hadn't been able to pay this man 200$ to perform a heinous act against life. Who knows, perhaps I would now have the daughter I've never had (I have 4 sons); reading the literature connecting abortions and breast cancer has shown me that perhaps I would not have had breast cancer in 1992; and that child would be a comfort to me now.

Surely the Order should include only Canadians of high moral tone. Dr Morgentaler has made it possible for thousands of women to make immoral choices, to carry out an act of murder, to make a choice with life-long negative ramifications.

I beg you to use moral suasion to stop this travesty.

Sincerely,

(Name withheld by request)

This woman is one of thousands who regrets her abortion and who also suffered from breast cancer, possibly as a result.

I hear the government is bracing itself for a negative reaction. No kidding. I bet thousands of similar letters and emails are already going out.

Right Girl on the bizarre advice convo with the AHRC

Is it now official policy of the Alberta Human Rights Commission to drive
Christianity underground? Are we in Iran, where Christian teachings must be done
in basements and behind closed curtains, never letting the neighbors know? Is
this still Canada?
This is absolutely terrifying, if you stop to think about
it. Whether you are Christian or not, you must agree that it is heinous that the
main religion of Canadians is being forced into hiding by these Commissions. Is
this what was originally intended when our government drew up the Charter?
Nowadays, kids go to school and learn about every religion except Christianity.
No one is allowed to complain. But if one of these kids attending the workshop
goes to school and tells his friends about it, all hell will break loose. It has
to be kept a secret. The founding religion of the modern world: Now a dirty
little secret for backrooms and speakeasies.

David Frum spares me from bothering to read this book

David Frum has written a delicious review that tells me I need not bother read "White Protestant Nation."

Frum writes:

Finally, “White Protestant Nation” fails as history because Lichtman will
not think seriously about the relationship between causes and effects. He is
fascinated by what might be called the inner story, and so he mines archives and
clippings for conservatism’s internal debates and struggles. But conservatism
did not come to national political power in the 1980s by means of memorandums.
It came to power because of the collapse of the governing liberal consensus of
the 1950s and ’60s. Riots, crime, inflation, rising taxes, gasoline lines,
recessions, foreign policy humiliation: it was these things that elected Ronald
Reagan in 1980. The story of conservatism cannot be told in isolation from
the larger political story. Yet Lichtman shirks that story — perhaps because to
tell it would require him to engage the possibility that the liberalism of the
’50s and ’60s had ceased to work.
You do not need to be a partisan of a
political movement to write its history. But you do need enough imaginative
sympathy to comprehend how it won adherents and supporters. Yet increasingly it
seems that the history of conservatism is attracting liberals who lack that
sympathy — for whom the whole thing was a giant con, a tissue of
rationalizations for ugly bigotries. These liberal chroniclers of conservatism
refuse to examine their own prejudices. They do not see that their wholesale
dismissal of the principles of others amounts to little more than self-flattery.
We might call this the Bourbon school of liberalism: after many years in exile,
it has still learned nothing.

If this is true, this is appalling news

The blogosphere is alight with news that the Governor General is going to bestow the Order of Canada on Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the man who brought us abortion on demand and who opened the door to the killing of millions of unborn children.

Several months ago there were similar rumours and I know many people wrote the GG and their politicians in protest. Everyone was reassured that no, these were only rumours, nothing was planned.

I will research this tomorrow when I'm back at work. At this point, I would say there are strong signals this is going to happen, but I do not know for sure.

In the meantime, check out Campaign Life Coalition's response via LifeSiteNews.com.

"It is dreadful that this honour should even be considered for a man who's
only claim to fame is that he is a professional killer of defenseless babies in
their mothers' wombs," said Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life
Coalition. "Those who have received this prestigious medal should return it
because it will have been devalued and disgraced," he continued.
"If Morgentaler had any integrity he would refuse the medal", said Mary Ellen
Douglas, National Organizer of CLC. "This presentation should be given to people
who have made Canada a better place to live and the elimination of thousands of
human beings who would have contributed to the future of Canada is a disgrace
not an honour."
Campaign Life Coalition calls on the Federal Government to
address the Governor General stating the inappropriateness of this action.
Concerned people should contact the Governor General's office and express their
disgust.

ProWomenProLife:

Someone is getting the Order of Canada tomorrow…and it looks like it could
be Morgentaler. These rumours are floating around the web. Here’s some info
behind the rumour.
On Friday, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) sent out
“Order of Canada talking points” to Conservative Members of Parliament and said
that tomorrow, June 30, the Governor General will issue new awards. Nowhere in
that email did it say who will get an award, but sources tell me Dr.
Henry Morgentaler will be among the recipients.
The talking points were meant
to show process–how the decision works, and that Cabinet does not have anything
to do with this decision. It sounds as though they are preparing for the pending
outcry.
Many questions remain: Why now? Why not part of the official
process back in February? Was protocol routed to do this? And finally, though I
only chose to blog about this when I had confirmation from different sources,
will it prove true?
Happy Canada day, all.

The Socon:

I’d like to make this humble request that Canadians from coast to coast
consider boycotting Canada Day celebrations this year because of the
disgraceful and outrageous act of awarding the Order of Canada to the notorious abortionist and baby
killer, Henry Morgentaller.

and 4MyCanada:

It has JUST COME TO OUR ATTENTION that, despite a large out cry against
this a couple months back, Dr. Henry Morgentaler will likely receive the highest
honour in Canada on Monday/Tuesday, the Order of Canada. This
is a surprise to us as we were assured by the Governor General's office that
there were no plans to honour him. So we, perhaps like you, have been stunned by
this announcement and left wondering what has happened behind closed doors.
Normally anyone who receives this award does so by unanimous consent of the
committee that approves nominees. From what we understand at this point, this
committee, headed by Chief
Justice Beverly McLachlin, PC, decided to over-ride that protocol and take
this one to a democratic vote on the committee. The majority of the committee
voted in favour of Morgentaler's nominee and so, for (what we understand) may be
the first time in history the committee appointed someone without their normal
unanimous consent - someone who millions of Canadians would not consider a hero
in our nation. We all need to act IMMEDIATELY on this one as your voice will
count, big time, in the next 48 hours.

Stay tuned. 4MyCanada has great links to help you take action to oppose
this move.

Even if you reluctantly support the idea that women should have the freedom to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term or not, if you think that abortion should remain legal but rare as Bill Clinton once famously said, then please oppose this man's getting such a great honor.

The strange notion of the collective

I have said before that I believe in group rights. Religious freedom is a group right. It means that a group has rights that precede the state for public practice of their faith and the passing of it on to their offspring. The state can only intrude when the Criminal Code is violated. Language rights are group rights that I have also come to respect because they are part of a nationality's freedom as a group to express themselves in their language and to preserve and pass on their culture within a democracy. I believe in individual rights, but I think they need to be held in balance with the rights of families, religions and nations within a state. Individual rights alone erode the rights of families and other intervening institutions that provide a bulwark against state power.

But the kind of group rights that so-called human rights commissions argue for are really "collective rights" that mar that precious balance that amplifies both the individual and the group, because human beings are most fully human in a social context. In a proper understanding of group rights, the individual is a person, not just an individual cow in a herd.

Instead, collective rights ignore the person. The individual is merely part of an aggregate. And the collective does not have rights over and against the state, the collective serves the interests of state power.

It is interesting, too, in the collective mentality, that if anyone within a collective is criticized for being a jerk, the collective reacts as if the whole group has been tarred.

So, if bloggers or columnists criticize the behavior of radical jihadists, the collective mentality reacts as if all Muslims have been smeared. If the tactics of some radical homosexual activists are criticized, the collective mentality reacts as if all gays and lesbians are being "hated."
If the race of gun-totting teenagers in Toronto is mentioned, then the collective makes accusations of racism.

A group right for Muslims, would allow Muslims to have private schools, to wear their hijabs or other symbols of their faith in public, to exempt their children from sex education classes that go against their morality, and to be able to argue for public policy in light of the Koran. The Criminal Code can and should allow the state to step in if hostile overseas entities are funding those schools, if terrorism is being incited in mosques or other institutions, and to stop polygamous practices or honor killings. But I think these latter things are the exception and not the rule for Muslims and we need to respect their religious freedom because ours depends on it as well.

But the collective mentality would see ANY criticism of Muslims or Islam as an assault on the entire group and uses the sense of offense as a tool to gain more power for this collective through the state. A group right prevents the state from meddling in the affairs of a group unless there is just criminal cause; a collective right invites the state to exert its power on behalf of usually a small cadre of individuals who purport to speak for the group but are really just trying to establish a mini-sovereignty for themselves and their copying machines and email lists. It is a perversion of real group rights. Ultimately it damages real group rights.

Racism exists and so does a tendency to brand people unknown to us as the other. It takes spiritual effort to overcome these tendencies in ourselves. We do not need the help of government to do this. God forbid! Who is making sure these government bodies aren't "othering" groups like white heterosexual males, or conservative Christians?

But once one gets past knee-jerk racism, but gains the right to say....this person is a jerk, whatever race or religion or sexual orientation, because one knows this discernment into the behavior of that person has nothing to do with their group. That person is just a jerk. That's all.

We need to take back our right to say certain individual persons are jerks and offensive and their behavior stinks without being tarred as racists.

The big collective "chip on the shoulder," worn by collectivists who want to amass the power of the state in their favor, needs to be knocked off. Abolishing human rights commissions is a first step. Then we will see what safeguards can replace them that will respect group rights but get rid of this Marxist collectivism.

Guy Earle, I hope you read this letter

My friend Denyse O'Leary has written Guy Earle an open letter and I'm going to do my part in helping her get it to him via the blogosphere.

If you don't know who Guy Earle is, you soon will.

Guy Earle is a comedian who now faces a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing because he acted--he admits it--like an a****** (this is a family-oriented blog) during an open mic comedy show he was hosting and said things he now regrets saying in response to two lesbians who were heckling him, accusing him of being anti-lesbian and who twice threw drinks in his face. You can see a YouTube video of Earle discussing his case with some other comedians in Ezra Levant's lengthy post about him. Scroll down and you'll find it near the bottom.

Denyse writes:

If anyone had asked me a few years ago what I thought of your show (as per your YouTube account), I would have said, "It offends me."

I would never say that today!

The tribunal fascists have hijacked words like "offend." If I say your show offends me, all I mean is, I would choose something else for private entertainment - maybe March of the Penguins, for example.

I don't mean that you should be dragged through tribunals, forced to spend your life savings on defence, forced to apologize for matters on which you are not sorry and do not believe yourself to be in the wrong, attend "reeducation" courses run by cranks and quacks purporting to brainwash you into believing something you reject - or ordered never to crack wise on a given subject again, in public or private.

You face all or any of those. And your fellow wisers will see and tremble. Or fight for the right to be funny.

Ezra Levant has written a couple of posts about Earle. Ezra writes:

Lorna Pardy, one of the humourless lesbians, filed a complaint against Earle and Zesty's. In B.C., unlike other human rights commissions, it is possible to make a preliminary application to dismiss a complaint.

That application to dismiss was rejected this week. Here is the ruling, that commits the matter to go to trial.

Take a look at who wrote it: Heather MacNaughton, the same tribunal member who chaired Mark Steyn's show trial earlier this month.

In that trial, too, the funny-ness of jokes became an issue. The Canadian Islamic Congress said that some of Mark Steyn's jokes weren't funny, but they also insisted that the CBC's awful "sitcom", Little Mosque on the Prairies, was indeed funny, and if Steyn didn't think so, he was a racist.

So MacNaughton feels comfortable in her self-appointed role as government joke-tester.

Oh, there's a joke here alright.

I lament this further loss of freedom and loss of common sense. I lament the fact that one thin-skinned radical lesbian activist is perpetuating the new stereotype of gays as intolerant of any criticism or dissent. I'm sure that EGALE would oppose this lawsuit, because they know it just looks bad, bad, bad on their community who themselves use trangressive art, including comedy, to deal with difficult issues. What do you think Rosie O'Donnell would have done -- whine to the government, or heckle back?

And in a subsequent post, after taking part in a debate on the issue he writes:

Finally, we have some top talent looking into the matter of what is or isn't funny. Forget about Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno; we've got the dour sourpusses at the HRCs on the file. Once they come up with the magic recipe, wannabe comedians around the world will simply have to follow the instructions of the HRCs, and -- presto! -- the laughs will follow. At least that's the logic of a government agency that seeks to be the arbiter of what is or isn't funny.

I was asked by the host how this would affect Vancouver; I said I doubt the Just For Laughs Festival would be visiting anytime soon -- talk about a frenzy of hate crimes! And I asked if Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock, both of whom use the word n*gger the same way you and I use the words "and" and "the", would be allowed into town.

Cole had a quick answer: yes they would. Because they're allowed to make Black jokes, even using the word n*gger. But Whites can't. I'd have to read the transcript to be sure, but I think Cole implied that not only would the same joke told by a White comedian be illegal, it wouldn't even be funny. This, from the "senior entertainment editor" of an arts magazine.

That's nuts, of course. But, from a "human rights" "law" point of view, Cole is actually spot on. Under our "human rights" "jurisprudence", Mark Steyn and Maclean's were subjected to a five-day "hate speech" trial for "Islamophobia" in Vancouver for quoting radical Muslims. The radical Muslims who made the offensive remarks weren't charged (though the BCHRT asserts its jurisdiction not only nationally, but internationally); but Steyn and Maclean's were charged for repeating them. That's actually Cole's logic: a lesbian can crack a joke about lesbians. But a straight woman, or a man, can't. Same joke; but only a special victim group is allowed to tell it.

I didn't find what Earle said funny. Even he wishes he hadn't said some of the things he said.
And if Earle employed these gals and said things like this, especially on a repeated basis, creating a hostile work environment, then I might be more sympathetic to a complaint to a human rights tribunal. But he was being a jerk and so were they. He is absolutely right though that we don't need a government body to legislate this dispute.

We do not need our taxpayers dollars going after people who say offensive things. Especially when he was in no position of power over these people, nor did he supply their livelihood or their living accommodations.

So Guy Earle, I hope you will fight for your freedom of speech and artistic freedom rights. We're with you. And I hope you are with us, even if you disagree with us about lots of things. That's what freedom of speech is about.

So, want to know what the Socks are thinking?

lol...you're hilarious bro. you really don't get it do you??

We have made our point, we have made our statement and whether we lose at all three tribunals it really doesn't matter. We have already won just by going to the Tribunal and sticking it to the haters out there such as yourself.

In fact even when we "lose" we win. We have told the haters out there such as yourself, and your ideological friends such as Kenneth Whyte, that we won't put up with their bullshit anymore...we won ages ago when we filed these complaints, when we got the ontario commission to condemn maclean's and when we actually showed up before the BC TRibunal to argue our case. So the horse has already left the barn...you can bark as much as you want, but we accomplished our objectives a long time ago...so bark on :). Calling the earth flat won't make it flat.

And rest assured i am partying, i was all of last night; it doesn't seem to me like you are.

More at Five Feet of Fury.

Well....here is "maximum disruption" at work.


I wonder if this is cause for an abuse of process lawsuit by the legal team to recoup their thousands of dollars in legal fees.

This shows what our mainstream media is slowly beginning to realize . . .that the process is the punishment and the maximum disrupters out there, the ones who want to steal our freedoms, know it.

Okay, I have read the SCOC decision and . . .

I am still uneasy.

You can read the decision yourself here.


I fear though that anyone who wants to protect their children from information that opposes their traditional religious beliefs and moral strictures concerning chastity is de facto a bigot and intolerant in the light of this decision.

What increases my disquiet is this: Ian Binnie participated in a wonderfully entertaining debate with Antonin Scalia at the Charter@25 conference a couple of years ago. Binnie was the "living tree" guy, while Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, was the "original intent" guy.

The "living tree" model sees the constitution, the Charter, and human rights as "evolving," "progressing," ever coming to new meanings that the judges need to interpret. It's a version of the "empty container" view that sees terms like marriage just empty abstractions into which society pours whatever meaning it chooses at the moment.

Scalia argued that the framers of laws had an original intent that must be taken into account, that the courts should not improvise and read in new meanings. That legislatures should change the laws, not judges.

Interesting, the word tolerance has, for the empty container/living tree crowd, morphed into meaning "agreement," and "acceptance." Thus when I read between the lines of this Rafe Mair decision, if you do not wholeheartedly accept and approve of the gay lifestyle and same-sex marriage, you are a bigot who at least tacitly approves of violence against gays and lesbians, or at least a "reasonable person" might arrive at that conclusion. Well, that's because anti-Christian prejudice is so widespread, so fashionable. At least some of the justices agreed this was defamatory against Simpson.

And God forbid that you use any "Onward Christian soldiers" sort of language.
I don't know of a Christian today who literally interprets the warfare imagery in the Bible. It is an internal, spiritual battle, and in no way a call to physical arms. In fact, St. Paul himself says we do not war against flesh and blood, a fact that seems to escape non-Christians who tend to be biblically illiterate.

To say Christianity promotes violence against anyone, including our enemies (Jesus teaches us to love them and pray for them) is such a libel against Christians, including activists like Simpson. You do NOT find people who go to Sunday school bashing gays and lesbians. Gay bashing exists and it is horrible and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but the people who do it are not Christians, but usually people on the margins of society, predators perhaps unsure of their own sexual identity who have a false need to assert their damaged sense of masculinity. It has nothing to do with Christian moral strictures.

I abhor violence, intimidation or anti-gay bigotry. But I also happen to think sex exists for a purpose, like hunger and thirst exist for a purpose, not just the pleasure it brings us when appetites are satisfied.

Tolerance used to mean "putting up with" things you disagreed with, or even disapproved of, because trying to legislate certain things out of existence represent a worse evil than the things you had to tolerate. It meant learning to live side by side with people with radically different viewpoints and lifestyles.

Now, unless you approve and applaud and agree you are a de facto bigot and intolerant, at least that's what I'm reading between the lines in this decision.

But this "one-size fits all" view expressed by our growing state religion is highly bigoted and intolerant of difference and genuine pluralism. It is highly majoritarian. We need to toughen up, to regain the old understanding of tolerance. We need to learn to "put up" with those with whom we disagree.

Disagreement must be freely allowed.

Alas, for us Christians, disagreement runs us the risk of hate complaints. I don't think the Rafe Mair/Kari Simpson case holds out much hope for us, I'm afraid.

Why does Joseph Brean still call it a "mutually acceptable" response?

I really appreciate the fact that the National Post has assigned Joseph Brean to cover the human rights commissions. He's done some really good work. Today he has the most comprehensive story of any media outlet so far on the Canadian Human Rights Commission's decision to dismiss the complaints against Maclean's Magazine.

(Longer version here)

He writes:

Brought by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the complaint was the centrepiece of a three-pronged, cross-jurisdictional offence against Islamophobia in the national newsweekly, with columnists Mark Steyn and Barbara Amiel the main alleged offenders.

The goal was an order forcing Maclean's to print a "mutually acceptable" rebuttal, but this latest failure at the federal level leaves the entire enterprise hanging on the forthcoming decision of a British Columbia tribunal, which heard the case this month.

Why does Brean persist in saying the goal was to force Maclean's to print a "mutually acceptable" rebuttal? I suppose because the complainants later revised their demands to say this is what they were seeking, he's still on somewhat factual ground.

But why does he ignore the fact that before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal sock puppet Khurrum Awan ADMITTED UNDER OATH that a "mutually acceptable" response was not on the table when he and his fellow socks met with the Maclean's editors. No, these "magazine hijackers" insisted on a writer of their choice and control over the cover art.

Ezra Levant reported that here:

That, too, is a convenient lie. As I reported from the courtroom of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, Khurrum Awan, one of Elmasry's PR puppets, admitted under oath many, many, many, many, many, many times that the CIC never asked Maclean's for an article to be published, written by a "mutually acceptable source". It was to be an author of the CIC's own choosing. Their claim of wanting a "mutually acceptable" writer was a lie, a PR trick, to make them seem slightly less unreasonable.

Either way -- mutually acceptable choice or not -- it was still an outrageous shakedown, a violation of Maclean's property rights and freedom of the press, and quite possibly extortion.

Thanks to Brean's report we have the first whining I predicted. Here he quotes from a statement from the sock's lawyer Faisal Joseph, a paragon of preparation and legal acumen so beautifully display in his performance before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal:

"We are not surprised at the decision in light of the inappropriate political pressure that has been brought to bear on the commission and that has prompted the commission to set up an internal review of its procedures under [the hate speech section of the Human Right Act,]" he said.

Mr. Joseph said his clients "will take some time to determine whether we will apply to the Federal Court for a review of the commission's decision or whether we are satisfied with the opportunity we had to present our case to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal."

Well, does Faisal Joseph want to outlaw "inappropriate political pressure," too? Anyone who disagrees with him is obviously "inappropriate."

Go ahead, and appeal this case. If you think the political pressure is strong now, just watch it grow as ordinary Canadians catch on to the fact that you and the commissioners who are sympathetic to your illiberal cause want to take away our fundamental freedoms.

Make our day.

Dear Kathy and Arnie--Congratulations!

Don't worry about the Hillary Clinton thing. I think Hillary's gorgeous.

You still have a bit of Flannery O'Connor about you, in a good way.

I think you look terrific. Thanks for putting up the pix.

And congratulations and may you live happily ever after!

Does this decision grant more license to bash Christians?

Though Ezra Levant seems quite sanguine about the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision involving a defamation case against Kari Simpson, I'm not so sure it's a good sign. I have not read the decision yet, but based on the news coverage, I fear it may be just another example about how it is open season on Christians. Anything said about conservative evangelicals or Catholics is "fair comment" no matter how defamatory, libelous, or egregious. Shoot, Dan Brown's "hate screed" The DaVinci Code was a mega bestselling book.

But say similar things--even if true-- about any other group and, well, all of a sudden, fair comment morphs into hate speech. I wonder what the decision would have been had Kari Simpson been sued by, say, a gay activist. We'll see what happens when Stephen Boissoin's case gets appealed. Some groups are more equal than others before the law.

Now maybe the principles in this case will be uniformly applied, and the bloggers being sued by Richard Warman will find this decision helpful. I hope Ezra is right to be optimistic that the highest court is upholding a broader notion of freedom of speech. But if that broader notion of free speech is only one-sided, giving the wholesale right to lie about Christians, demean us, dehumanize us, while making it increasingly illegal for us to defend our faith and moral principles in the public square, this decision could further hurt us.

See, anti-Christian bigotry is fashionable. It's even been useful in political campaigns to bash those scary Christian conservatives, paint them as theocrats, to portray them as morally equivalent to terrorist jihadists, to call them "anti-Charter" and "anti-Canadian" as Liberals have done in recent federal campaigns. There is a spate of books touting this thesis selling well in the United States and bloggers like Andrew Sullivan refer to Christian leaders as "Christianists" and warn they want to take over and impose a theocracy as dismal as that of the Taliban. These are pernicious misrepresentations at best, outright lies at worst. While there may be the odd kook who wants the return of Old Testament Law, or the ridiculous, tiny but ubiquitous Fred Phelps gang with their hateful messages, these people represent less than a fraction of one one-hundredths of a per cent of Christian believers.

The problem is that Christians ARE in danger because of these lies.

The biggest under-reported story in Canada may be the abuses of human rights commissions says Rex Murphy, but the biggest under-reported story in the world is the wholesale, bloody persecution of Christians around the world. Christians are being literally martyred in numbers that dwarf those from earlier periods of history. But does the mainstream media give a hoot?

Christians are in real danger of imprisonment, persecution, beatings, house-burnings, and death, from Africa to India to Indonesia. In Canada, while we remain free of physical harassment, our rights to worship as we please, to publicly express our views, to ensure our beliefs are passed on to our children, are being rapidly eroded. The state is intruding on our families, parents' rights to educate their children and trampling on the consciences of people who object to the new secularist orthodoxies.

But I suppose this is a yawn for the intelligentsia who work for the news media because many themselves have a knee-jerk prejudice against Christians. They think we bring it on ourselves.
They call us haters when they are in fact the ones who hate us.

The great Christie Blatchford gets it

I love Christie Blatchford. When I canceled my Globe subscription, she and Margaret Wente were about the only ones I missed.

In this column today, she nails what is wrong with Canada--and the West, because this incident could have happened in the United States or Europe--and illustrates why the thesis of Mark Steyn's America Alone is a must read for every Westerner (whether by birth or by choice) if we want to preserve our precious heritage and the freedoms that flow from it.

She writes:

It was at that point that the Air Canada clerk at Gate 27 approached me.

“Excuse me,” he said, “you can't say those words. Those words are illegal.”

“What words?” I asked, bewildered, given that by then I'd said probably 2,000 words.

“Suicide bombing,” he whispered.

Now, I know of course one is not to make jokes or threats about bombs at airports, and properly so. But I hadn't been doing that, rather recounting some of the public evidence heard that day at a public trial in the nation's capital.

“That's not illegal,” I snapped, barely restraining myself from adding “You ninny.” Besides, I told him, I was a reporter telling another reporter about my work day, which was true enough.

“Do you want me to call security?” he asked primly. “I'm supposed to call security in these situations.”

Read the whole thing.

Most of us are in a state of tremendous denial. Some are so deep in denial they think people like Mark Steyn are the problem. If he would only stop writing about the problem it would just go away.

But the problem is not just the small but potentially lethal number of radical jihadists in our midst, the ones who combine a strange mutation of Western victimhood with literal interpretations of the Koran. No, the problem really is the secularist multiculturalist fundamentalists who also hate our Western heritage and who have the levers of the state to help them undermine it. It's this mindset that prevents us from protecting ourselves from the small proportion of homegrown enemies--who can be of any race and who may think they are acting in the name of Allah, but who represent a virulent, politicized strain of a great religion.

What about Catholic Insight Magazine, huh?

Okay, so Maclean's Magazine is off the Canadian Human Rights Commission hook, but, pray tell, WHY on earth did it take them so long to dismiss the Maclean's complaint?

Did they have to peruse Ayatollah Khomeini's writings to see if he really did write some rather weird instructions about the treatment of animals and double check every demographic fact and see whether that Norwegian imam actually made the famous "mosquitoes" remark? Why bother if truth is no defense? Did they travel to Europe to see what the demographics look like on the ground?

Catholic Insight Magazine, a small circulation magazine, is still awaiting its CHRC determination and that case has been going on far longer. I know Mark Steyn is a lot more popular than the priests and columnists who write for Catholic Insight but the principles are the same. If Catholic Insight is not safe, not even the Toronto Star is safe.

If the CHRC is really serious about interpreting Section 13 in the light of the Taylor decision, this one will be dismissed, too.

It's outrageous though that Catholic Insight has already spent upwards of $20,000 defending itself.

Fire. Them. All. is no longer good enough. Abolish. Them. Now.

And should there be a need to handle discrimination cases in the workplace, let a system of independent, non-biased labor arbitrators handle it. Let similarly non-biased arbitrators, chosen by both parties as in a labor arbitration, handle housing complaints as well.

No more of these ideologically-driven thought police. We need a Royal Commission to investigate the damage these bodies have done and their investigative practices. We need a set of recommendations that will protect real civil rights and not the made-up new every year human rights that are always at the expense of real civil rights and aim at increasing the size of the Nanny state.

The whole human rights act needs to be redrafted.

Section 13, which is a club that any government can use for partisan purposes, must go. It is way too broad, too open to subjective interpretation. If Taylor is the test, then Taylor should be written into Section 13. Truth and fair comment MUST be defenses.

This is ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS

Stephen Boissoin posts a summary of a conversation with an Alberta Human Rights Commission representative, who advised the U.S.-based pastor who made the call that he get consent-forms before people hear his teachings that include a small section on homosexuality. The Commission employee also advised that none of the participants talk about any of the content publicly. And, did I say this particular course is going to be taught inside a church?

But, when Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu parents want to have their children exempted from hearing the sexual dogma of multicultural fundamentalist securalists that undermine their traditional religious views and their moral sensibilities, the state FORCES them, no consent forms, no opting out allowed, at least in British Columbia and soon in Quebec. In Quebec, starting this fall, even PRIVATE schools will have this sexual dogma forced on students from elementary school onwards.

This conversation is evidence of the breathtaking anti-Christian, anti-religious ideology that is the new state religion that is being forced upon us by busy-body bureaucrats who think they know what's best for social cohesion. This is unbelievable.

They do not realize that their "faith," though non-religious, is a faith nonetheless, based on a priori philosophical assumptions that cannot be proven. Oh, but some ideas, like the Marxist claptrap mixed with postmodernism that animates so many of these people, have been proven to be nihilistic garbage, as evidenced by the fall of the Soviet Union. Too bad so many of our human rights establishment didn't get the memo that their ideas are woefully false.

Well--the Socks can always appeal

Mark Steyn reacts to the fact the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint against Maclean's Magazine. He includes some excerpts from the CHRC's dismissal letter:

The Steyn article discusses changing global demographics and other factors that the author describes as contributing to an eventual ascendancy of Muslims in the 'developed world', a prospect that the author fears for various reasons described in the article. The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision. Considering the purpose and scope of section 13 (1), and taking into account that an interpretation of s. 13 (1) must be consistent with the minimal impairment of free speech, there is no reasonable basis in the evidence to warrant the appointment of a Tribunal.

For these reasons, this complaint is dismissed.

You know, if the CHRC had always scrupulously abided by the narrow parameters outlined in the Taylor decision, and their provincial counterparts had also done so, then we might not see the widespread outrage over Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. But now that Act has been exposed as so broad it gives any government the opportunity to persecute unpopular opinion.

Pundita weighs in:

TRANSLATION: Maclean's knows, and the CHRC knows, and everyone else following the story knows, that an epic battle is just getting underway.

This said, any day one can avoid an inquisition is a good day.

And congratulations to all those Canadians who have tirelessly kept the story of the anti-democratic Section 13 before the public eye.

Ezra Levant is, of course, on this with some cogent analysis:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. And so they did.

With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they're already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn't pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean's and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing their own political death sentence.

So they blinked. Against everything in their DNA, they let Maclean's go. That's the first smart thing they've done; because the sooner they can get the public scrutiny to go away, the sooner they can go about prosecuting their less well-heeled targets, people who can't afford Canada's best lawyers and command the attention and affection of the country's literati.

"There's nothing to see here, people! So turn your TV cameras off, and let us continue on our work without your scrutiny! We promise not to target famous Canadians -- at least not for a little while. We'll keep picking on under-lawyered weaklings. We'll continue to build up our jurisprudence, continue our 100% conviction rate, continue building legal precedents. So when we come for Maclean's next time, we won't have to blink."

I wonder when we'll hear the first whining from the Socks about this, or whether Barbara Hall will jump out and criticize her federal counterparts for undermining her drive-by verdict, her smear on Maclean's editorial professionalism.

Of course, the Socks could be stupid enough to try to appeal this dismissal. Er, not the Socks of course, but their puppet-master Mohamed Elmasry, the president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

The state is usurping the roles of parents

Brian Lilley takes a look at some disturbing incursions by the state into the family domain:

The late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously said, “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nations.” The remarks were made by Trudeau when, as Justice Minister in 1968, he sought to decriminalize homosexual acts and relax Canada’s restrictions on abortion. Forty years later, the Canada Trudeau left behind still seems to believe that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation -- but can make itself very active in its living rooms.

Read it all. It's got a great title: Who needs a family when you've got a government?

The picture shows the seemingly ubiquitous Mark Steyn and Brian Lilley at 24 Sussex Drive.

I was at the Prime Minister's garden party this evening.....

and who should show up but Mark Steyn, fresh off the plane from France.

Since journalists and their families were invited, there was a petting zoo out front on the lawn at 24 Sussex Drive, with ponies, goats, calves, a donkey and so on. Mark said he wondered if the zoo was like those fish ponds in sushi parlors where you get to choose your meal.

It was a great party set up with kids in mind: hamburgers, fries, milkshakes, onion rings, fresh donuts, cotton candy to eat, face-painting and a clown.

Anyway, Kady O'Malley came up with her slim red BlackBerry in hand and told us the Canadian Human Rights Commission had dropped its complaint against Maclean's for the excerpt from Mark's book America Alone. Mark said he was disappointed, and joked that maybe he should appeal the decision.

Maclean's editor Ken Whyte was there, too, and said, yes, it is indeed true. And, no, the commission did not issue a Barbara Hall-ish drive by verdict. So I guess the Canadian Human Rights Commission has gained a little political savvy and wants to survive a little longer. But the handwriting is on the wall.

Maclean's put out a news release in response to the decision, saying:

Though gratified by the decision, Maclean's continues to assert that no
human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the
mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial
decisions of the nation's media. And we continue to have grave concerns about
a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be
pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same
complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to
say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those
parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions
with regard to speech issues.

The outlawing of honest discussion--only in Canada? Pity

Robert Spencer, writing in Human Events, says it can happen in the United States, too:

Can honest discussion really be outlawed? You bet it can. As long as free people do nothing to stop it from happening. As the OIC presses American politicians to use anti-discrimination and hate speech laws to “stem this illegal trend,” we need to stand up now with Mark Steyn and all the others who are on the front lines of this battle, and tell them that what they’re doing to Steyn in Canada must never happen here. We must tell our elected officials to stop this outrage, resist OIC lobbying, and reaffirm in no uncertain terms our commitment to free speech -- particularly now, when so much depends on our being able to speak with honesty about the nature of the jihadist threat, and so many powerful entities want to make sure we do not do so.

So much depends on this -- possibly even including our survival as a free people.

The jihadist threat is real. Most Muslims in Canada came here to escape extremist elements who would use violent means to establish Islamic supremacy. But a small but vocal faction of Canadian Muslims would prevent Canadian journalists from even discussing the dangers posed by a minority of violent, politically-inspired Islamists. Truth is no defense. Fair comment is no defencs.

As David Harris writes in today's Ottawa Citizen, we need only look at their own documents and words to understand the plans these violent groups have. Jihadists--those who want to use violent means to impose Islamic supremacy on the world--are the minority but remember, it only took 19 men to carry out the 9/11 attacks. All over the world, Muslims are turning against these violent extremists, but in Canada we soon may not even be able to write about that.

Harris, a former senior CSIS official, writes:

Last year's dramatic Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas made the point. There, U.S. prosecutors put klieg lights on previously secret strategic documents seized from extremist Muslim Brotherhood (MB) sources. This subversive worldwide organization is the font from which spring a number of hardline "mainstream" North American Islamic front groups and "representative organizations," including many recently defined as unindicted co-conspirators by the U.S. Justice Department -- and some, amazingly, periodically engaged in "outreach" by unsuspecting interfaith and even government officials.

The prize U.S. document was the Brotherhood's 1991 long-term plan to subvert and collapse the United States and its political, economic and other infrastructure, preparatory to achieving a forced radical Islamicization of that country, and others. Through a malign combination of immigration, intimidation, psychological warfare and subterfuge, the MB proposed "settling" -- colonizing -- the U.S., infesting its infrastructure, and relying on societal openness, constitutional freedoms and influence operations to proceed from there: "The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process'," said the memorandum, adding ominously, "with all the word means."

If human rights complaints against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are successful, then soon we will not be able to read opinion pieces like those of David Harris in a Canadian newspaper. We will not be allowed to quote documents like these, because Mark Steyn's quotes of radical Islamists, are among the grievances in the Canadian Islamic Congress' human rights complaints. In a dishonest sleight of hand, they have removed the quotation marks, and accused Steyn of saying himself what he is in fact quoting. They have even accused him of predicting an Islamic takeover of North America when he was in fact writing a book review of a NOVEL that imagine a future Islamic dystopia.

There is an interesting pattern developing. In the Stephen Boissoin case, criticizing the gay activist agenda was deemed to be hateful against all gay people, even though Boissoin began his letter with a paragraph distinguishing between those activists who want to force their sexual dogmas on everyone else, and gays and lesbians who want to live in peace. And, interestingly, many bona fide gay activists in EGALE find the decision against Boissoin revolting, even though they vehemently disagree with the former youth pastor.

It's the same thing with criticizing radical Islam. It is characterized as hatred against Muslims as a whole when it is not that at all. In fact, some of the most outspoken and effective critics of radial Islam are themselves Muslim. But their lives are in danger from these radicals. It takes great courage for people like Tarek Fatah to speak out. He writes:

Canada is a country where Muslims are respected and accommodated like in no other land on Earth, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is immoral for the Islamists to slander my country with the slur of Islamophobia. As Statistics Canada has shown, incidents of racism in Canada are far more likely to affect Christian black Canadians and Jewish Canadians than Muslims. However, truth is the first casualty in this propaganda war being waged against Canada by its own Islamists.

We have a human rights industry in Canada that is selling our freedoms down the river, who hate Western civilization and want to rob us of our birthright.

Mark Steyn's America Alone was about people like Pearl Eliadis

Well, I have just finished reading Pearl Eliadis' brilliant Power Point demonstration.

Let me go through some of the pages.

Pearl Eliadis sets the stage:


She claims the Maclean's on Islam articles spawned the "poisonous blogs."

Well, my blog started because I needed a platform to publicize my novel The Defilers and to provide a platform for my journalism. I have been reading Mark Steyn for years--his columns and his books--and they have done nothing to make me hate or fear Muslims. In fact, I welcome the law-abiding Canadian Muslims who appreciate our Western way of life, who have strong family values, and who love our precious freedoms.

I do have concerns about the minority of Islamic extremists, but I am adult enough as are most Canadians and Americans, to separate between those who want to destroy us (Hint, Pearl, there was a certain event on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City and Washington that gave me reason for concern) and the majority of Canada-enriching, law-abiding Muslims who have as much to fear from these extremists as any of us do.

My blogging in earnest started AFTER THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINTS AGAINST MARK STEYN AND EZRA LEVANT. THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINTS PROMPTED ME TO BLOG ALMOST EVERY DAY SINCE DECEMBER ON THIS ISSUE.

So.....there is the cause and effect for you: The Sock Puppets and their master Mohammed Elmasry are responsible for inciting me to blog about so-called human rights commissions. Ditto the complaints against Ezra Levant for republishing the Danish cartoons. The complainants and the commissions that accepted those complaints are the ones who are responsible for the "poisonous blogs they spawned," to use her distorted words.

I categorically reject, however, that my blog is poisonous.

As for the blogs using "distorted and deliberate use of language," well, I think her Power Point demonstration is full of distorted and deliberate use of language, so methinks she is projecting her own tendencies onto those she criticizes.

Human rights commissioners are thought police. She can dress up $30,000 fines and forced apologies as "remedies" but no one except people like her are fooled by those euphemisms. These are punishments without due process. When truth is no defense, nor is fair comment, and anything a human rights commissioner disagrees with is deemed poisonous or extreme, then, there is no due process. But the size of the fines, in addition to legal fees could wipe out an ordinary person. Voila! what do you call someone with the power of the state behind their ability to punish, er, apply remedial fines in addition to the bankrupting legal fees but thought police?

I have kept up pretty closely with the blogging on this issue--at least from the pro-civil rights side---and her Power Point demonstration is the first time I have heard the words "Muslim Home Invasion." Mark Steyn's article barely mentions Canada. She is promoting Islamophobia by using those loaded words. I have not seen even the angrier blogs use that kind of language. As for the comments sections, well, you never know these days if it isn't a human rights investigator or an undercover police officer planting hate.

Her "Muslin Home invasion" description of Mark Steyn's work has nothing to do with the overall thesis of his work. America Alone is really about people like Pearl Eliadis. People who express ideas that are evidence of our civilizational suicide. People who think our precious freedoms and rights are merely empty containers into which progressive thinkers like her pour any meaning they want. People who would chuck our civil liberties out the window and replace them with bureaucracies regulating even our thoughts and feelings.

Mark Steyn's articles and books are about the low birthrate in the West and the fact that our populations are going to halve themselves every generation until we can no longer support our social programs or our infrastructure. His essays are about the fact that we have no confidence in our future, that we no knowledge of our heritage, our history, and the fact that people died to give us the rights that people like Eliadis are trying so hard to take away.

"Should the law be frozen in the post-Cold War epoch?" she asks. She gives away her post-modern, progressive mindset in her rhetorical question. Old rights will disappear, like religious freedom for Christians, but new rights will appear, like that of radical Islamists not to be criticized. Presto!


Pearl Eliadis: philosopher

"Speech IS the most powerful human act," she writes. My goodness!

"It shapes ideas, accounts for most of our communication .....blah blah"

Instead of writing before I think, since for me ideas usually precede speech rather than vice versa, I'll remember how the Gospel of John opens. Maybe she ought to read it and think about the fact that many, many people wiser than she is, going back to Socrates, have profound things to say about truth and beauty and civil society and human freedom that she seems to know nothing about.

Let us pray for Pearl Eliadis that she might have true wisdom and understanding and a humble and a contrite heart, so that she will have some ideas before speaking, some perception, some light to guide her confused soul before she tries to regulate the speech of others. Obviously she has no clue about what built the most beautiful, most free civilization the world has known, no clue about its foundational ideas. No, people like her want to make those foundational ideas hate speech. Often real wisdom is without speech, without words. It's the ability to see clearly, to see what is, despite the confusing speech and distortions of those who think there is no truth, only power relationships. Father, please forgive her and her ilk for they know not what they do.


Pearl Eliadis: are you an anti-Christian bigot?

She says there is no evidence of any commission ever ordering an editorial board to print anything. Well, Lori Andreachuk ordered the Red Deer Advocate to print her seven page Stephen Boissoin decision and to print his forced apology.

"Successful cases against extremists are used as proof that very borderline cases against journalists might well succeed: bait and switch tactic," she writes.

Well....successful cases against extremists---have included cases against Christians for speaking up on religious doctrines. Does she think Christians are extremists? Does she think our rights to believe and to practice our faith should be taken away from us? Human rights commissions are attacking Christian institutions right and left. And, the process is the punishment. Even when complaints against Calgary Catholic Bishop Henry were dropped he was left with thousands in legal fees. The little Catholic Insight Magazine has spent $20,000 defending itself against human rights complaints from a man who thinks he is in a better position to tell what is Catholic doctrine than the priest who edits the magazine. As Ezra asks, who died and made Rob Wells pope?

Pearl Eliadis: Mark Steyn ought to sue you

Nowhere has Mark Steyn ever ever referred to a "Muslim Home invasion." Those are her words and they are a distortion that, if they were made about me, would prompt me to file a lawsuit. He does not subject Muslims to hatred. As I said earlier, it is more likely that the actions of human rights complainants are subjecting certain individual Muslims and supporters to more contempt and outrage than anything Mark Steyn ever wrote.

Nowhere does Mark Steyn EVER incite violence.

To compare his work to that of the Rwandan radio station that called Tutsis cockroaches and directly incited murder is libelous and vicious.

Ezra writes: "That's an execrable comparison -- Steyn has not been accused of inciting murder; again Eliadis blurs mere speech and violence. But, again, it wasn't a Rwandan radio station that killed people. It was soldiers with machetes."

Read Ezra's detailed fisking here. Follow his link to the Power Point demo yourself.

Ezra fisks Pearl Eliadis' Power Point presentation

Ezra Levant writes:

On page 13, Eliadis hints at her real agenda: hijacking and commandeering Canada's media, and subjecting them to HRC meddling. She wants "poisonous" -- hell, why not just say "murderous" while you're at it! -- speech in the mainstream media to lose its "immunity" from Eliadis and her group of would-be editors. She loved Rick Salutin's comment that "money controls the media", a Marxist complaint that seems touchingly quaint, in the era of the Internet. Neither Eliadis nor Salutin spring to mind when I think of the word "modern", so they probably don't know much about how the Inter-Webs work, but money is no substitute for good ideas, as the New York Times's shareholders are discovering.

As happens quite often, Eliadis reaches for foreign legal traditions when she wants to supplant our own legal traditions of liberty.

I am printing off her Power Point presentation to read over lunch. Ezra has a link to it in his MUST READ post.

Great homily on contraception

As I covered the marriage issue and learned about the consequences of separating procreation from the definition of marriage, I also began to learn about the natural law wisdom in Roman Catholic teaching about not separating the procreative and unitive aspects of human sexuality.

These are hard teachings but I have increasingly begun to see their wisdom. Father Tim McCauley preached a courageous homily on this issue. Please read it with an open mind.

I want to begin by asking forgiveness from all of you on behalf of the Church for our failure to proclaim and explain the Church’s teaching on sex and marriage, contraception and natural family planning. Our Popes have been excellent shepherds for us, but many bishops and priests have neglected to teach the truth, so I ask for your forgiveness.

I also want to place this discussion of contraception in the context of God’s mercy, which is the message of today’s Gospel. Jesus re-assures us all: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mt 9:13). This is very good news for us, since all of us have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). We all live together among the ruins of the sexual revolution. Fr. Raymond D’Souza put it well in an article on the movie and TV series Sex and the City: “The lasting accomplishment of the sexual revolution was to remake society according to the desires of corrupted adolescent males, with plenty of pornography, easy women and disposable relationships, facilitated by contraception and abortion, cohabitation and divorce” (National Post). I don’t have time to go into detail, but the deceits of the sexual revolution contributed to the break-up of my own family and in the death, through abortion, of two of my cousins. I have also sinned through my own fault by choosing to believe the lies of the sexual revolution, and I did not live a chaste and celibate life prior to becoming a Catholic.

Read the whole thing. Educate yourself.

Hmmmm---hidden inside the Bouchard-Taylor report

...is a tidbit that Montreal Gazette columnist Don MacPherson found troubling. Did any of the freespeechers pick up on this?

Don MacPherson writes (May 27):

The media clearly had "a will to present conflict" and sought out "the most extremist viewpoints." Their reporting on incidents often reflected only the viewpoint of the "plaintiffs" or "victims."

And they made accommodation an issue in last year's provincial election campaign and kept incidents in the news by seeking comment on them from politicians.

One of these politicians comes in for particular attention in the report. "By claiming to speak for the majority, Mario Dumont constantly, but implicitly, legitimized a certain populist, even racializing discourse in public opinion." (To racialize is to give a racial character to something.) This made "expression of intolerance" more acceptable.

Among the media, Le Journal de Montréal was singled out for repeatedly creating a "dramatic staging" of real or imagined situations of reasonable accommodation, based on a very clear opposition of 'les Québécois' et 'les Autres.'"

As a solution, the author offers a hair-raising suggestion: The press council and the CRTC, the federal broadcast regulator, should be given the power to suspend the right of media or individual journalists to publish or broadcast for "negative coverage" that harms social cohesion.

The disturbing assault on the family is an assault on freedom

Many libertarians who uphold individual rights above all else fail to recognize the importance of the biological family as a fundamental unit of society, a bulwark against overreaching state control, and a crucible for the inculcation of virtue and character. Virtue and character, reflected in wisdom, courage, justice and above all moderation or self-control, are the marks of a truly free man or woman. Self-restraint in other words. Otherwise, we need the restraints of the state and we need the state to pick up after our fatherless children and other consequences of our unrestrained "freedom of choice." Now a true libertarian would say, well, we should have no state picking up the pieces and people would quickly learn from their mistakes by the harsh consequences. But too often, it is children who have to pay for the harsh consequences of their parent's choices.

It is disheartening to me that the Facebook group opposing Bill C-10, the income tax act that would remove tax credits from movies deemed to be contrary to public policy has more than 14,000 members who are in effect saying don't touch our sex saturated entertainment, but the one supporting Mark Steyn and the people being crushed by draconian so-called human rights commissions has only slightly more than a 1,000 members.

If there were government moves to regulate pornography on the Internet I bet you would see an outcry about freedom of speech similar to the ones the Liberals raised over Conservative attempts to make sure violent fictional child porn did not have an artistic freedom defense.

But, apart from a few courageous MPs in the Liberal and Tory parties, where are those who are crying out for freedom of speech when it comes to religion, conscience and political opinion?
They think they are free when they choose to smoke cigarettes. And maybe for most people the first few times they visit a site they can take it or leave it. The first few times they light up a cigarette the same.

But with cigarette smoking I learned the hard way that "he who sins becomes a servant of sin."
Quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I ever did, because I discovered this habit was a compulsion, that I was not free to stop via a free choice, that I had to rely on the power of God through prayer to help me. It was a humbling experience, to discover that I was a slave to cigarettes. Thankfully, the Truth in Jesus Christ does really set us free from the shackles of sin. But alas, teaching Christian morality and the freedom through self-restraint and living through the power of the Holy Spirit is increasingly being criminalized through human rights commissions.

Maclean's Magazine has some interesting articles this week about Internet pornography and how children are getting exposed to it in the privacy of their own family rooms.

Yet...I bet if there were any political action to regulate porn on the Internet so as to protect families and children, you would see an outcry against "censorship" like you would not believe. The same people who are silent about real censorship would be pumping the handcart to hell like crazy to protect the rights of children and men to enslave themselves to soul-destroying, dehumanizing, demeaning sexual content. Gee, if the so-called human rights commissions really wanted to look at hatred against women, and boys and girls and men they should go after the porn industry.

Instead, however, the targets of the state are the very things that can preserve and transform our society for the better.

Barbara Kay writes about how the state is encroaching ever more and more upon the rights of the family, as a judge did recently in the case of a father whose 12-year old daughter sued him because he grounded her.
Barbara writes:

Public recoil from the court's appropriation of what most Canadians recognize as a private family dispute was swift and intense. As the Post's Saturday editorial noted: "The courts have no business -- none -- in such routine family matters. This ruling is so profoundly intrusive we can only hope the Quebec appeals court strikes it down, and quickly."

Well, it may and it may not. Thanks to the Charter of Rights, our judiciary has come to assume that all personal behaviours are legally examinable, with alternate behaviours liable to enforcement at the court's pleasure, and so -- under the guise of the child's "right" to a peer social ritual -- an appeals court validation is not unthinkable.

As for the Supremes, should it get that far, who can say nowadays? Perhaps they would decide it is "fundamental justice" for a 12-year-old to exercise autonomy over her body's public representation, or that posting salacious pictures of herself "does no harm" or that since no individual liberties are guaranteed without the court's approval -- including the right to discipline one's own child -- the court's personal values, read into some or other fuzzy Charter sentiment, may supersede the biological parent's wishes in response to any trivially aggrieved child.

Not only do we have a court deciding against a father who tried to discipline his daughter by grounding her after she posted suggestive pictures of herself on the Internet, we have a school board in Vancouver telling parents teaching on marriage and the family that is totally contrary to traditional religious beliefs will be mandatory. No religious exemptions. This is a draconian interference with the traditional rights of parents to determine the education of their children.

We need to deepen our understanding of true freedom, and how individual rights and collective rights of families and religions become a bulwark against those who would deify state power and make us worship Caesar. The HRCs are Caesar's shock troops. When I say collective rights I do not mean collective rights in the expense of individual rights.....we need both, held in a good balance. And by collective rights I do not mean the right "not to be offended." I mean the right of a nationality, of a religion, to publicly express and practice its conscientiously held beliefs as long as they do not violate the Criminal Code or the rights and freedoms of others. Religion is not just a private thing. It is a communal activity. Families are not just what we choose them to be. They are a social institution that is more than the mere some of the individuals. The biological family--mother, father and their offspring---are the best institution for ensuring the procreation and the rearing of future generations.

The state is destroying these intervening institutions.

The pope speaks on human rights . . .

During his live homily, delivered via satellite to the statio orbis mass of the 49th Eucharistic Congress, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the most important human right of all, the right to life.

Here's my story on the historic event.

By satellite video, Pope Benedict XVI addresses the 49th International Eucharistic Congress.

QUEBEC CITY - By satellite video, Pope Benedict XVI told more than 55,000 pilgrims here June 22 about the wonders of the Eucharist.

“The Eucharist is our most beautiful treasure,” the Pope said via two giant screens that loomed over the historic Plains of Abraham at the closing Mass of the 49th International Eucharistic Congress. “It is the sacrament par excellence; it introduces us in advance to eternal life; it contains all the mysteries of our salvation; it is the source and summit of all the action and the life of the church,” he said in a homily delivered live in both French and English.

The Pope said the Eucharist does not separate us from our contemporaries, but, as the supreme gift of God’s love, calls us to make the world a better place.

“We must not cease to fight so that every person is respected from conception to natural death, that our rich societies welcome the poorest and restore their dignity, that every person can live and feed his family and that peace and justice radiate on all continents,” he said.

The rest.

Joe Sinasac has a nice wrap of the week here.

Check out our blog of the Congress here.

Great profile of Famille Marie-Jeunesse at LifeSiteNews

John-Henry Westen, editor of LifeSiteNews.com does a wonderful feature on Famille Marie-Jeunesse, one of the vibrant new religious communities at the forefront of a revival of the Catholic Church in Canada.

Eight members of this community were ordained in Quebec City during the 49th International Eucharistic Congress, 12 young men altogether. The next day Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, said the ordination was "the turning point" for the Church in Quebec.
Another 12 have been or will be ordained this year. Read the whole story. This is a wonderful community. Here's an excerpt

The most striking difference between Marie-Jeunesse and other Quebec orders, however, is their fidelity to authentic Catholicism. No sixties-type push for women priests, gaia worship, and eneagram lectures. The new community is fully pro-life and fully pro-family and devoted particularly to the Eucharist and to following the example of the Virgin Mary in faithful adherence to Christ.

LifeSiteNews.com interviewed members of the new community at the recent Catholic Media Convention in Toronto. At one of the masses at the convention, Quebec City Cardinal Marc Ouellet and Salt and Light Television Chief Fr. Thomas Rosica stood in awe before the spectacle of a choir filled with such joyful young people; indeed, the choir members seemed to glow more than smile.

The source of that constantly exuded joy became clear as Cardinal Ouellet announced with fatherly pride that these young people were from Marie-Jeunesse, a new religious community of men and women founded in his archdiocese. Immediately follwing the Media Convention closing mass at which the community sang. the Cardinal embraced every member of the choir and engaged in animated conversations with them as a much loved father would be engaged by his children.

Fr. Dominic Lerouzes, ordained as a priest to the community 5 years ago explained to LifeSiteNews that the order is a contemplative community that prays about 3 or 4 hours per day. Beyond that Fr. Dominic said their work is to just be themselves while giving "assistance in the faith to young people." They place a strong emphasis on joyful music with a preference for "contemporary rhythms."

(Pix by John-Henry Westen, LifeSiteNews.com)

Ever wonder why we don't hear more from moderates?

This might be one reason why. The Toronto Star's public editor Kathy English writes:

I also believe it was a courageous act of journalism for Javed, a Muslim woman who has written illuminating articles for the Star in the past about her spiritual journey to Mecca to fulfill the holy Muslim pilgrimage called the hajj, and also about her choice to wear the Muslim head scarf, the hijab.

As a journalist and a "visible" Muslim who chose to expose evidence of polygamy within the GTA's Muslim community, Javed well knew she would come under fire. But she also believed that reporting on this controversial, "taboo" issue, which is clearly illegal in Canadian law, could spark critical debate among Canadians.

I, however, was surprised by the personal attacks against her. Javed's commitment to her faith has been questioned by other Muslims and some have even suggested it was improper for a Muslim reporter to report on this.

One "open letter" that came to my office, the Star's letters page, and is now circulating in the online blogosphere, accuses Javed of demonizing Islam itself. "If your intention was to spark debate on polygamy in the community then the Toronto Star was not the forum for it," the letter states. "There is already ample anti-Islamic sentiment in the world and it is not befitting for a Muslim to add to it.

"As a Muslim woman, you had an Islamic obligation, to defend this aspect of your faith, not to deliver a further blow to an already bruised community."

Most interesting. I want Canada to be a safe place for courageous, religious Muslims like this journalist.

I'm back

Hello everyone. I am back from more than a week away in Quebec City, covering the 49th International Eucharistic Congress. Though AWOL from my own blogs, I participated in one with Joe Sinasac over at The Catholic Register's site on the Congress.

I was a little disappointed at how little coverage this huge event received in the non-religious news media.

Anyway, I have some things to catch up on today, but I hope to resume blogging on the latest developments in the human rights commission area soon.

George Jonas wonders why Harper isn't apologizing

for the social engineering going on right now.

He writes:

Mr. Harper’s mea culpa for the cultural arrogance of officials riding roughshod over indigenous families under the pretext of “assimilation” shows he would have made a great prime minister 50 or 75 years ago. But lavishly apologizing for past mistakes is one thing. Recognizing present ones is quite another.

A prime minister for our times would recognize that, while he’s saying sorry for residential schools, his entire country is being turned into a residential school. He’d notice the censorious state’s intrusions into contemporary life under the pretext of “public hygiene” or “human rights.” He’d apologize for the cultural arrogance of Canada’s hate- or health-police trying to tell editors what to put into their periodicals, clergymen into their sermons or parents into their mouths.

What about it, Mr. Harper? You’re Prime Minister — any interest in being a great one? Now that you’ve tackled the social engineers of yesterday, will you take on today’s [expletive deleted]?

I wrote something similar recently. I predicted that some day a prime minister will apologize for the present human rights fiasco in Canada.

Some insight into how it feels to find out someone's praying for you

My friend the Sheepcat has a powerful post up about how angry he was when he discovered his parents were praying for him to leave his homosexual lifestyle.

Though Christian teaching for hundreds upon hundreds of years draws a distinction between the sin and the sinner---we're told to hate the sin and love the sinner--someone whose identity is bound up in what they do experiences the hate of the sin as a hate of their very being. Which is why it is so important to show the love for the person, even if we speak the truth and the truth happens to be critical.

This post may give you some insight and a sense of compassion. Read it all. It's a powerful testimony and I'm sure once you've read it you will be eagerly awaiting the sequel.

I've never forgotten that Victoria Day, 1988, was when our big fight began,
an argument that threatened to completely tear me away from them when we most
needed each other.

I found out they were praying for my deliverance from
homosexuality. Had been praying, for the three years since I'd come out to
them. Three years. Three #%$&!@ years during which they hadn't said a thing
to me about this. Not a thing. Three %&*$^ years.

At first I was too stunned to say anything. I didn't let on there was a problem and just let the full awfulness of the situation unfold as my mother explained what had been going on.

She and I had been talking on the Monday morning of the long
weekend, talking about homosexuality, which was unusual for us. Normally she
studiously avoided the topic, despite my many attempts to draw her into
discussion. My father, a United Church minister, had heard me out on several
occasions as I challenged the traditional church teaching on the subject. I
thought he was reasonably sympathetic to my point of view. Mom, I knew, was not
very comfortable about the whole business. But give her time, I thought,
hopefully she'll come around.

Well! What a rude shock awaited me.

Feel a little discouraged? Need to know God is in control? Read this

Jeanne Damoff gets persuaded into helping out at Vacation Bible School. Something beautiful unfolds. Something that makes you know God is at work:

I know some of you are thinking, "Oh, quit whining. You can handle a bratty
kid for a couple of hours." But you have no idea. Attila is not your garden
variety brat. He's been banned from all children's activities at church, kicked
out of the local Boys and Girls Club, and was picked up from school by police
because he assaulted the principal. Picture Helen Keller before Annie Sullivan
worked any miracles, and you have a pretty good idea of his self-control. He
kicks walls, throws things, bites, and spits. And he beat up two adults at our
church who tried to restrain him. (Legion, anyone?)

Oh, and did I mention Attila is barely nine years old?

If you want a Poster Child for Brokenness Through Sin, here's your prime
candidate. He was removed from his home, because his mom is a drug addict. His
dad (not married to his mom, who has three children with three different
fathers) did time for making a home-made bomb and blowing something up. And
that's just the fungus on the frozen toenail of the amoeba living on the tip of
the iceberg. Understandably, Attila is a very angry child.

God is good. He knows our weakness, that we are but dust. He also knows
some of us make choices based on a fun-o-meter, but He's sovereign even over our
sluggardliness. And God always has a plan.

Please read this whole story over at The Master's Artist, a fabulous blog of Christian writers.
Don't let the persecution get you down.

Tarek Fatah and the Socks-Tee hee

Tarek Fatah takes on the Sock Khurrum Awan in the National Post's Full Comment Section:

How can you cater to the tantrums of a spoiled brat, set up by a puppeteer
who chooses to hide behind a burqa while manipulating a naive and guilt-ridden
liberal elite that includes Barbara Hall and the three commissars in the B.C.
Human Rights Commission? Khurrum Awan says, free speech in Canada is
"really a far-right Republican argument being imported " into this country! If
free speech is such a problem for these Islamists, why don’t they find soil that
is fertile to their authoritarian spirit, which it seems they miss so much.

Why can't we tell the Bin Laden fan club in Canada: "You are free to migrate to Iran or Saudi Arabia... How can we help you?”

Canada is a country where Muslims are respected and accommodated like
in no other land on Earth, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is immoral for
the Islamists to slander my country with the slur of Islamophobia. As Statistics
Canada has shown, incidents of racism in Canada are far more likely to affect
Christian black Canadians and Jewish Canadians than Muslims.

And the Girl Socks respond!!!!!

In his piece Islamists who have a problem with free speech should leave,
Tarek Fatah enlightened the Post’s readers with the name-calling he directs at
anyone he disagrees with, which Muslims across Canada have grown accustomed to.
This time around the target was our colleague and fellow sock-puppet (as we have come to be known) in our human rights complainants against Maclean’s, Khurrum Awan. According to Fatah, by filing a human rights complaint and calling upon Muslims to demand a representative voice in media, this law student qualifies as an “Islamist” allied with Osama bin Laden.Fatah’s muddled rant reminds us of a
December 3rd press release about our complaints issued by Fatah’s Muslim
Canadian Congress (MCC), an organization consisting of five individuals and a
coffee table: “Mark Steyn’s piece was definitely alarmist, but the answer to his
challenge is to write a counter-piece and demand that Maclean’s publish it.” Of
course, we had already asked Maclean’s for a counter-piece nine months earlier
and been refused. But verifying facts is not a quality that Fatah’s crew is
known for.

The Brussels Journal fisks the New York Times

The Brussels Journal had this to say about the New York Times piece on freedom of speech.

The New York Times (NYT) is in the business of changing the American
culture, especially what it perceives as really bad American habits. One of them
is free speech.

In an article (Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech) the
NYT tried to address the issue of the different approach that American judicial
system takes on the important issue of free speech. The article is a marvelous
study in the architecture of deceit.

snip

What is excluded from this paragraph, and the rest of the article, is any
mention to what was “mocking and biting” in the Maclean’s article. It’s a very
useful omission.
And it’s all more useful since the article proceeds to talk
about racial epithets, Nazi regalia, the American Nazi Party marching in Skokie,
Ill., Ku Klux Klan and other hateful stuff.
The reader is to infer that the
content of the Maclean’s article came pretty close to all of the above
anathemas. But if the NYT were to mention parts of the actual content of the
Maclean’s article it would make the American case for free speech. Namely, that
the effort to control or ban hateful speech ends up suppressing all speech no
matter how well reasoned and defended.
Regulation and control of political
speech by the state leads to its control by the governing elites and that’s what
the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution tries to avoid. And this is
precisely what the Maclean’s case proves.

John Thavis on the Traditional Anglican Communion

One key question is whether Anglican traditionalists upset by recent developments in their church might be welcomed as a group into the Catholic Church.

The Traditional Anglican Communion, which claims 400,000 members on six continents, has asked the Catholic Church to receive its members into full communion. Privately, Vatican sources say the request is being studied, but that such "corporate communion" for dissenting groups within a church community is not favored as a model.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's chief ecumenist and head of its delegation to the Lambeth Conference, said in May that the Vatican is praying for the unity of the Anglican Communion "because we are not interested in new factions, new divisions -- this is not helpful."

In general, the Vatican has endorsed Archbishop Williams' efforts to strengthen the bonds of Anglican unity and was pleased with the proposal in 2004 of an "Anglican covenant," which Anglican provinces would subscribe to as a shared profession of faith. The covenant is expected to be a major topic of discussion at the Lambeth Conference.

Vatican officials also have advocated strengthening the role of the Anglican primate, the archbishop of Canterbury. In essence, many of the Catholic-Anglican issues boil down to the question of authority and how it is used in ecclesial communion.

Imagine if the state ordered a gay activist to publicly renounce his lifestyle in a newspaper

There are many gay activists out there who love freedom of speech and with whom civil disagreement is possible.

Ezra Levant has a great post on this:

Lock asks us to imagine if the roles were reversed -- if a Christian
"militia" had burst into a gay rights meeting. I think the police SWAT team
would have responded, really I do. Do the same mental exercise regarding
Rev. Boissoin's order: imagine if an anti-gay bureaucrat had
ordered a gay activist to apologize to a Catholic priest, and then to write
a public renunciation of his gay lifestyle in a newspaper. It's
unthinkable.

I'm impressed with EGALE's approach to freedom of
speech -- and, in this article, their belief in property rights and the right to
be left alone.

Stephen Boissoin is being unfairly targeted

There are some people who have ended up before human rights commissions whose rights I would defend, but I would not want to have to sit next to them on a long train ride, or hang out with them at a dinner party. Even some of the confessing Christians, people who share my faith, I may not especially like all that much. I might think they are over-the-top, narrow-minded, too buttoned down, too whatever. I realize though in many instances I may be buying the spin put out by the mainstream media. But in the course of my job, I do run into lots of Christians and there's a reason why the Ned Flanders stereotype on the Simpson's is so, well, on the mark.

Not that any of the people being persecuted by human rights complaints deserve the railroading they have received. But some of them may have a few things about them that act a bit like a "kick me" sign--their timing is off, they are nerdy, they are immoderate or too in your face in a way that is annoying, not just because of what they say. Some of these people can even annoy those who basically agree with their points, but disagree with their tactics.

But Stephen Boissoin is not a Ned Flanders type at all. Nor is he someone who lacks social skills, or whose faith is all head and no heart. Nor is he someone who is such a single-minded activist that he forges ahead in ways that offend even the people who agree with him. He's someone that I wouldn't mind hanging out with, at least in the impression I got after I interviewed him earlier this week. We don't always get to choose our poster boys and our free speech martyrs. Stephen Boissoin is the real deal.

Pete Vere interviewed him this week, too, and posted the whole interview. He came away with the same impression.

Admittedly, given the stridency of his letter that brought about the original complaint, as well as the way he was characterized in the mainstream media, I expected a sort of Fred Phelps light.

This impression was wrong.

I realized how wrong it was within seconds of speaking to him last week for the first time.

Stephen struck me as anything but hateful. He came across as gentle, albeit fervent like most evangelicals (although he doesn't admit the label, calling himself a simple Bible Christian). Moreover, he expressed genuinely felt concern for the emotional, spiritual and physical welfare of those who practice the homosexual lifestyle. I think part of the problem was the fact that the theological vocabulary between Catholics and Protestants has evolved differently since the Reformation. So quite often things that are understood or interpreted one way by one, are misinterpreted another way by the other.

However, there is one thing Catholics and evangelicals share besides their faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. And that is a 100 percent conviction rate before Canada's human rights tribunals on Section 13.1 cases. The legal persecution makes no distinction among Christians.

Which is why I felt it important that others see this side of Stephen Boissoin - the side many have neither seen nor heard because their impressions of him are drawn from secondary sources. These sources are not always sympathetic or balanced. I am grateful to Stephen for graciously accepting the invitation for an audio interview and podcast.

One of the best overviews yet of the freedom of speech crisis

Brian Lilley has a great overview of the freedom of speech crisis that I hope will get read far and wide.

He writes in "Free speech on the ropes":

As if being accused of causing something that may not actually have happened is not bad enough, a recent filing by Canada’s Justice Department in another case stated quite boldly "truth and fair comment are no defence". The filing, submitted in a case against a white supremacist accused of spreading hatred on the internet, goes on to say that the jurisprudence supporting this claim is settled. Given the near 100 percent conviction rate of those accused of spreading hate on the internet in Canada, it appears the "truth is no defence" claim will carry the day. So to sum up, in Canada, you can face a tribunal hearing for writing something that is only "likely" to expose a group to hatred and contempt. The fact that what you write may be true or simply be a fair journalistic comment, won’t help you fight those charges.

Now before I explain why all of this prosecution of thoughts and writing in Canada matters to the rest of the world, let us consider the implications. Over the past number of years, many critics of the decision of President Bush to go to war in Iraq have asked why Saudi Arabia was not targeted. Saudi Arabia, after all, was home to 17 of the 19 hijackers that perpetrated September 11th. To make such an argument in Canada could be considered hate speech. Writing that 17 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudis could see you hauled before a human rights tribunal and the fact that what you wrote is true would not matter.

Someday a prime minister will apologize for human rights commissions

Yesterday, after listening to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's historic apology to Canada's Indian Residential Schools policy of forced assimilation, I mused about the possibility that some future prime minister might one day apologize to Christians like former youth pastor Stephen Boissoin and others with unpopular, non-mainstream opinions who have been persecuted by special interest groups activists through the gleeful, state-sponsored coercion of federal and provincial human rights commissions.

Just as human rights commissions represent "the best progressive thought" brought to us by the new social sciences that have replaced traditional notions of the human person with a reductionist, scientific construct, so was the assimilationist policy of previous governments the best progressive thinking of that time. There was a big difference between church-run religious schools that answered a need for education and acted within the church's mission of evangelization and a government-hijacked system that used state power to coerce attendance and mandate certain assimilation policies.

It was grievously wrong to deliberately break up aboriginal families, and deliberately try to "cleanse" vulnerable children of their culture and community bonds.

Just as it is grievously wrong to deliberately try to force people like Stephen Boissoin to violate his conscience and religious beliefs with a state-imposed apology that would be about as meaningful as those conversions to Islam by kidnapped journalists.

Tribunal quashes ex-pastor's right to free speech

An Alberta Human Rights Commission panel has ordered a former Christian youth pastor to apologize in the pages of the Red Deer Advocate for a 2002 letter to the editor he wrote opposing homosexual activism.

In a May 30 decision, AHRC panelist Lori Andreachuk also ordered Stephen Boissoin, 41, to request The Advocate publish her judgment against him.

She has also imposed a lifetime ban on ever speaking or writing "disparagingly" about homosexuals - in the media, on the Internet, in speaking engagements or in emails. She also ordered him to take down any "disparaging" remarks from his website.

Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, who has spoken at a fundraiser for Boissoin, said the ruling effectively strips the former youth pastor of his right to free speech.

Thank goodness some sensible voices are speaking up

There is a great op ed in today`s Ottawa Citizen by Raheel Raza, who describes himself as a devout Muslim.

He has some interesting things to say about Islamophobia. And he does not like the way some Muslims are bandying this word about as a way of stopping debate.

But many Muslims in the West use Islamophobia as a penalty card
against free speech whenever there is criticism of Muslims. This
reactionary response is stifling dialogue, debate and discussion -- all signs of
a healthy thriving democracy. When I last checked, Canada still was one, but I
fear Canadians are being held hostage by a small group of people who insist they
speak for all Canadian Muslims.

They certainly don't speak for me.

Don't get me wrong. As a devout Muslim, I cherish and respect my faith. However, the question I ask is how much Islam is harmed by those demonizing it. From Dante's Inferno to the Danish Cartoons, there have always been people who demean Islam.

Does this harm the faith? No.

We would have to be very insecure in our faith
to think that the workings of evil minds and dirty politics would harm a strong,
vibrant religion that has flourished for 1,400 years despite hostility and hate.
I see no need for us to be apologists or defenders of the faith. Islam will
survive, thank you.

And he said this about the Muslims who are trying to stifle freedoms:

My version of Islamophobia is an extreme fear at the way Islam has been
misused, misquoted and misrepresented by some Muslims. Stifling intellectual
debate; trying to pass off cultural values as Islam; unreasonable accommodation
requests; intolerance against others while screaming racism for themselves and
total disrespect for the culture of this land we live in and call home -- to me,
this is Islamophobia..

May you know how sweet Christ's love is

A friend sent me this wonderful prayer today:

A word from Reverend Fulton J. Sheen, quoted in our church bulletin yesterday:

"Transmute the poor bread of my life into your life; absorb the wine of my wasted life into your divine spirit; unite my broken heart with your Sacred Heart;...let not my abandonment and my sorrow go to waste. Gather up the fragments, and...let my life be absorbed in you. Let my little cross be entwined with your great cross....consecrate these trials of my life here on earth which would go unrewarded unless united with you; transubstantiate me so that, like the bread which is now your body, and the wine which is now your blood, I too, may be wholly yours. I care not if, like the bread and wine I may seem to all earthly eyes the same as before. I believe through the eyes of my faith that you can transubstantiate the visible species of my life, my... duties, my work, my joys, my sorrow and my soul, my will, my heart; the substance of my life wholly into your service so that through me all may know how sweet is the love of Christ."

Jesu Dulcis Memoria

Clemon's dystopic novel makes compelling reading

I hope Mark Steyn reads Keith Clemon's dystopic novel Angel in the Alley and gives it the kind of plug he gave Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin.

Keith Clemons is a Canadian author who writes as rip-roaringly a good read as Ferrigno does, maybe even better. But the dystopia he creates in Angel in the Alley is not a future North American Islamic republic, it is a future designed by the kinds of thinkers behind our run amok "human rights" commissions and the postmodern, secular fundamentalist thinking behind them.

Keith is a friend and a colleague at The Word Guild, a national association of writers and editors who are Christian. Angel in the Alley is his fourth novel. All his previous novels have won major awards. But sometimes, I confess, reading books by friends is a bit of a chore. Not Keith's. I looked forward to reading Angel in the Alley. It's a page turner, with deft description of what a future world will be like when there is no longer any freedom of religion or freedom of speech.

Of course, Keith wrote this novel well before the Mark Steyn case was in the public eye. If you read it you will be amazed at how, well, prophetic it is. But the characters are also interesting and the story moves through this dystopia with some interesting villains and twists and turns.

I asked Keith a couple of questions about his novel. The whole "interview" is here. Here's a bit of what Keith had to say.

1) Tell me a little about Angel in the Alley and the future dystopia you created.

Angel in the Alley is the story of a man, Peter Defoe, and Angela, his
seven year old daughter who is dying of cancer. Angela has but one wish, she
does not want to die in a hospital; she wants to be at home surrounded by her
family. Peter is determined to honor her request, but just as they’re about to
leave an international warrant is issued for his arrest. His crime? Illegally
distributing Bibles over the internet. This is the landscape I’ve created for my
book: a day in which many of the rights we enjoy today have been stripped away.
As a society we tend to take our freedoms for granted. Yet all around us the
ability to express certain beliefs, particularly those that sanction God, are
being eroded. There was a time when having an open discussion on points of
disagreement was considered healthy discourse, but that simply isn’t true today.

(. . . .)

Without the express purpose of providing religious training, we would not
have the educational intuitions of Yale, Princeton, Oxford, and Notre Dame.
God-believing men and women have blessed our world with invention and discovery:
Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press, Isaac Newton discovered the laws
of motion, and Breese Morse the telegraph, just to name a few. Albert Einstein,
Louis Pasteur, Johannes Kepler, Franz Boas, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Gregor
Mendel, Alexander Fleming, and hundreds of others were great men and women of
faith.

Even Columbus, who is credited with the discovery of North America,
believed he could cross the ocean without sailing off its edge because the book
of Isaiah, found in the Bible, said the world was a sphere. All of these
benefits were granted to us by men of deep religious conviction who felt they
were responding to the call of God on their lives. Yet in spite of all the good
they accomplished, men still want to remove God from the public square. This is
why, as a setting for my book, I had to invent a different world than the one in
which we live. Frank Capra, in his 1946 classic, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” had
Jimmy Stewart, alias George Bailey, receive a look at what the world might be
like if he’d never been born. What I tried to do in Angel in the Alley was paint
a similar picture so people could see what the world might be like without the
freedom to worship God.

4) Aside from giving your readers a rip-roaring good read, what else did you hope to accomplish by writing Angel in the Alley?

It was, and is, my hope to provide Canadians and Americans with a wakeup call. At the conclusion of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge said to the Ghost of Christmas future: "Ghost of the Future...I fear you more than any specter I have seen...Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?"

Ebenezer was given a glimpse into a possible future and was wise enough to discern that the future can be changed by the actions we take in the present. Similarly, Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

I think it’s time for good men to speak up. I applaud people like Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn who are taking the Canadian Human Rights Commission to task, just as I applaud all those who have had to pay fines for standing up for what they believe. If we do less, we may well end up weeping with the anonymous writer of what has become known as the, Holocaust Poem, to wit: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Darren Lund on TV last night

Last night I caught a story on CTV about the Calgary Gay Pride Parade that included an interview with parade marshall Darren Lund.

Most interesting to see how young, how curly-headed, how almost cherubic he looks. He was beaming with pride, like a proud father of the parade, which according to the story, saw a much bigger turn-out than expected, given stereotypes about Albertan conservatives.

Interesting as well, that the reporter included a line and a clip from Lund, establishing that he is not gay himself. Why is there always that insistence? I mean, so what? Who cares, really, whether Lund is gay or not? Why does he have to trumpet the fact that he is not and insist it gets into the story? Is this some kind of paternalism and cultural appropriation at work? Does he, as a white, heterosexual male, think that gays and lesbians are not capable of running their own parade and standing up for their own rights? I wonder how the freedom-of-speech respecting gay activists who have been at the forefront of the battle for gay rights feel about someone like Lund muscling in on their movement and tainting it with a whiff of totalitarianism and old-fashioned paternalism.

Lund is the same person who filed a complaint against youth pastor Stephen Boissoin for a letter to the editor that expressed outrage against gay activists, not gay people as a whole, if I recall the letter correctly.

It is interesting to me how one cannot criticize any one part of any community--whether it is gay activists or Islamic extremists--without running the risk of a human rights complaint that accuses you of targeting the whole community. And we have people who are not part of those communities leaping up to make the accusations, like Lund and like Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall or like a certain serial complainer who is known in the blogosphere as Lucy, who does the same thing for the Jewish community even though he is not Jewish.

I can't think of better representatives of the nanny and the pappy state than Barbara Hall and Darren Lund. The Toronto Star is their political organ. No wonder people connected with this paper promote the silencing of political opponents.

Well....Christians can play identity politics, too. If Canada is going to see the shutting down of freedom of speech when it comes to the criticism of vulnerable groups, then Christians will not stand by to let themselves be the only group that is open to defamation and misrepresentation.

Darren Lund's systematic attacks on Samaritan's Purse, Franklin Graham's charity, might open him up to human rights complaints. He might argue, well, what I'm saying about Franklin Graham is true. But truth is no defence, Mr. Lund. You have held Christians up to contempt and hatred by demeaning this son of famous evangelist Billy Graham. To borrow from another religious tradition, I could say Karma was at work if that would happen. What goes around comes around. Poetic justice.

I personally think it'll be a sad day when this comes to pass. Not because I like seeing Christians routinely defamed and misrepresented in the public square and people like Lund actively promoting Christophobia. But I would hope instead that we could return to respecting our cherished freedoms of speech and of religion and conscience, instead of the wholesale trampling on these rights that the actions of human rights commissions lately have represented.

In fact, if political leaders like Premier Stelmach and Prime Minister Stephen Harper lack the fortitude to do a frontal assault on illiberal human rights commissions, they can shift them from within by appointing, say, evangelical Christians as commissioners. Heh heh heh. Boy oh boy would we suddenly see the Toronto Star changing its tune.

So, what if the law advocated slavery or chopping off hands, huh?

It is Sunday, so I will refrain from writing the four-letter word beginning with "j" that my fingers so want to type about this guy.

John Miller writes:

Section 7(1) of the B.C. Human Rights Code prohibits anyone from publishing any statement that “is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt” because of their religion.

That is the law as it stands, and everyone must obey the law.

This is a textbook example of legal positivism. And legal positivism leaves no room for transcendent notions of justice. That's why it is the perfect dodge for the power hungry postmodern crowd. Laws are whatever we decide them to be and they have no need to be moored in any kind of moral truth because there is no truth, only power relationships.

I remember a conversation I had about proper authority with the retired bishop of our little Traditional Anglican Cathedral. He said, "If I tell you to wear blue shoes, I hope you would disobey me."

He noted that his authority came from what the Church has always taught from the beginning. It was an authority he was under as well, not something he could make up as he went along.

But Johnny "blue shoes" Miller would have us wear blue shoes if our lawmakers all decided we must.

Oh yeah, and he quotes Johann Hari as an authority, you know, the guy who brags about seducing neo-Nazi skinheads and Islamic extremists and having sex with them. Hari wrote:

In the week that I spent hanging around that mosque, I met a lot of cute blokes. It's a curious thing: very, very few people, when you actually get to know them, seem like very bad people. No matter how barking mad and offensive they may be on the public stage, when you're sitting eyeball-to-eyeball, and you get them to see you as a human being, it's very hard to hate them. And I really, really liked Mohammed, a rather cute 19-year-old lad who had got caught up in this crowd.

Mo (as his friends call him) had a very dry sense of humour, like most of that group, and a really attractive sense of purpose and loyalty (all, unfortunately, poured into killing people like me). Again, like the Nazis, it was one of those intense all-male groups which seemed very straight - so intensely straight that it crossed a line into homoeroticism.

Gee, is Hari promoting hatred against Muslims by saying that some want to kill gays?

I think "Blue Shoes" is auditioning for the chance to write the rebuttal of Mark Steyn's piece in Maclean's, the one he seems to be itching for the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to impose in their rooling.

Someday these words will be in history books

"Against the argument that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre: 'Oh yes you can — you must, if in your considered view there is a fire'."

"In that case there is a duty to cry fire."

--Julian Porter, Robson Square, Vancouver , June 6, 2008
Closing arguments in the show trial against Maclean's Magazine

The Boissoin rooling

It is the most revolting order I have ever seen in Canada. Ever.

But Ezra says Mark Steyn may face a similar punishment.

Moby Dick really about the size of MLTJF's, er, pinky ring

If you haven't been glued to Jay Currie's ongoing metablogging of the 'roo trial, then pour yourself a glass of chilled white wine and enjoy.

He has a number of excellent observations. Among them this one:

To understand that game you have to pay attention to the basic idea of post modern literary theory: it is the reader rather than the writer who gives a text meaning. To give an example - let’s say a pomo literary critic announces that Moby Dick is about Herman Melville’s penis. And let’s say Herman Melville is still alive and says to the pomo critic, “you are wrong, its about a whale.” Pomo literary theory would reject “privileging” the author’s view and would accept the reader’s interpretation as equally, or indeed more, valid than the author’s.

Now this may sound completely crazy but as Mohammedan legal titan Faisal Joseph cited the Collins case(s) that was exactly the button he was pushing. In the Collins cases the Tribunal had a rather difficult time because they knew, and the complainants knew, that Doug Collins was a raging anti-semite, the problem was that his writings really didn’t bear this knowledge out. What to do? Well, what they did was rounded up an expert or two to give the opinion that Collins’ writing was all the more invidious because his antisemitism was occluded. Hidden beneath the superficial surface meanings of his actual words. Voila, problem solved….off with his head.

The Socks and their experts and Mohammedan legal titan Faisal Joseph did not and could not prove that the Steyn piece was, on its face, hate speech. I suspect they knew that going in. But what Steyn wrote made them feel bad so it must be bad. And, on the logic of Collins - which, sadly was never brought to the SCC - once the bad feeling was established it is just a matter of finding an interpretation of the text which will explain the feeling it invokes.

Sunny Dhillon's Globe story prompts hateful comments

I wonder if the Globe and Mail will get hate complaints for some of the semi-literate, troglodyte responses in this thread in response to Sunny Dhillon's story about the Robson Square trial of Maclean's Magazine.

I must say, the caliber of posters at Maclean's is far superior.

Excellent editorial in the Calgary Herald

Read all of this. (h/t Ezra Levant)

The Herald editoral says:

Commissions were given such powers to fight discrimination in employment and accommodation, not for interest groups to silence their opponents in kangaroo courts. The system is out of control.

Nor does Andreachuk understand the limits of her mandate. Announcing the punishment last Friday, she awarded $5,000 "damages" to Lund -- "although not a direct victim, (he) did expend considerable time and energy."

-snip-

Finally, Boissoin is to provide Lund with a written apology for the sincerely held opinion he published in the Advocate.

As apologies that do not spring from changed minds mean nothing, this must be seen for what it is: the kind of recantation squeezed by an inquisition from some unfortunate, a denial of conscience for the sole purpose of grinding the dissenter's face into the dust, the better that he may eat his words.

In its present form, Alberta's Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act is profoundly anti-liberty, leaving Albertans the right to say only what does not offend their neighbours on any of 13 different grounds.

It has been used to guillotine legitimate discourse on matters of immediate public importance, and removes from men and women that most basic of all human attributes -- the right to their own opinion.

A version of this editorial needs to be reprinted in every newspaper across the country, with the details changed to reflect a local human rights abuse, with an appeal to the provincial premier in question. I'm sure there won't be any difficulty in finding an egregious case (well, what might be hard will be choosing which egregious case to highlight). The Globe and Mail and the National Post need to run national versions calling on Stephen Harper. Abolish the thought crimes provisions in various so-called human rights laws. Save freedom of speech. Save freedom of the press. Save freedom of religion. Save genuine pluralism and the right to robustly disagree with prevailing orthodoxies.

Ezra comments:

I predict that the Government of Alberta will continue to ignore this issue. They'll say it's only animated by a few hot-headed conservative bloggers, and some obsessed editorial writers in a few newspapers. So they'll keep hitting the snooze button on their alarm.

And then my trial will come, as Mark Steyn's did. And then the thousands of Albertans who have been briefing themselves on this subject, and getting angrier and angrier, will have the same spectacle as Vancouver is now having. And the national media will come to town -- well briefed, well prepared, especially after Mark Steyn's show trial in Vancouver.

And then the Alberta Tories -- rudderless, boring -- will have an enormous issue thrust upon them, an issue they could have neutralized in advance.

The Vancouver show trial of Maclean's and Mark Steyn was spectacular, but only because of the buffoonery of the kangaroo "judges" and the stupidity and outright lies of the Canadian Islamic Congress. The respondent, Maclean's, was quite well behaved. They didn't put forward provocative testimony; their lawyers were very sober and buttoned-down; they tried to make it as proper a procedure as they could. Mark Steyn didn't testify, or even "live-blog" the event. The circus aspects of the hearing were all from the CIC and the tribunal itself.

And it was still an amazing show, that grabbed national attention, and even foreign interest.

Dear reader, imagine what an Alberta show trial, over the Danish cartoons, would look like if the respondent chose to misbehave a little bit.

Individual rights and collective rights--both good

I was listening to Mark Steyn this morning on this great podcast on the Al and Mike show.

I agree with most of what he said. But he said that human rights commissions are looking at collective rights at the expense of individual rights, something to that effect.

Well....no, they are not. I think we have to be careful about thinking only in terms of individual rights and individual choice. Collective rights, or communal rights, are also important rights, especially when it comes to families and religions.

This notion of balance between individual and collective rights is a deeply Catholic conception.
When individual rights are enshrined at the expense of collective rights, then we have decisions like the one against Christian Horizons, where the individual rights of someone to be a practicing lesbian trump the rights of a Christian organization to require that its members uphold a Christian morality code concerning sexual behavior.

The right of the Catholic Church to determine that the priesthood is male, something I wholeheartedly agree with, is a collective right that I would not want to see the state come in and trample on with orders that the Church must ordain women. The state could march in and say this is an equality issue. It is not. There are profound theological reasons why the priesthood is male. It doesn't exclude women from ministry, from being prophetesses, administrators, evangelists or theologians. For the state to trample on this would be a criminal intrusion.

However the state should intrude if a latter day Jim Jones comes to town with his Kool-aid, or a polygamist sect violates the rights of women and children.

When we think only of individual rights, then we have Supreme Court decisions like the so-called Swinger's Decision that allowed those who want to practice group sex in public clubs to trump any notion of community standards. I like the idea that communities can insist there be no pornography sold at waist height in their corner stores, or that communities up North with rampant alcohol problems can choose to become dry communities.

When we think only of individual rights, we undo the rights of families to be responsible for the religious and moral education their children.

What is happening with human rights commissions is that there is no consistency in how they apply notions of either individual or collective rights. They seem to make decisions for the most part in ways that violate rights, period.

When we violate communal rights, we undo the very institutions that provide human beings with the social bulwarks against the state. It is in the interest of the state to focus on the libertine choices of the individual---rights to abortion, rights to ditch your family responsibilities, rights to
choose the porn channel and Swinger's club, rights to euthanize grandma---because as anyone who has even tried to live a Christian life knows, Jesus was right when he said he who sins is a slave of sin.

An aggregation of individuals who are slaves to sin, to their carnal appetites, because they have been deprived of strong families and churches that have the rights to inculcate virtue (real freedom, the freedom to exercise self-control) is an aggregation of individuals that will need huge state-sponsored social programs to clean up the messes they leave behind by their profligacy, problems left by fathers who abandon their children, children having children, addiction, and other social ills. What our notion of individual rights is doing to us is undermining the rights of churches to pass along the character-building truths that make for wise, self-governing individuals. Instead, we are just as likely to have a human rights commission come in and insist that a Catholic school , for example, teach relativist, sexual dogma that is destructive of chastity and marriage.

Just as human rights commissions pervert the notion of individual rights, they also pervert the notion of group rights. Some individual's rights are more equal than others and some groups are more equal than others. All rights must be discerned within a framework of natural law. Alas, in a postmodern world, there is no such thing.

We need to reeducate ourselves to more robust notions of rights that include both the individual and collective dimensions. They need to be held in balance. Those who become judges need a profound philosophical grounding, one that is lacking today's law schools.

Same thing with notions of marriage. Marriage used to be a social institution that hooked up tribes or families. Often these marriages were arranged. Notions of individual choice didn't matter much. That was an extreme. Lots of people, especially women, suffered under this model. But now we have swung to the other extreme, where the social and institutional nature of marriage as the best institution for the procreation and rearing of children by a mother and father biologically related to them has been thrown under the bus of individual choices. The expense to the rights of children is horrific.

We need a balance.

Christians can play identity politics, too

If anything is going to turn the illiberal elites against human rights tribunals and commissions it is going to be the increasing success of Christian groups' use of human rights complaints, especially those of pro-life groups.

Subsequently Hamilton Right to Life, which had sponsored the ad campaign, filed a human rights complaint against the city.

Peter Boushy, a lawyer and the secretary for Hamilton Right to Life filed the complaint on behalf of the pro-life organization. He says that he now credits the complaint with having pressured the city into changing its unfair policy.

"No one wants to be labeled a human rights violator," Boushy told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview today.

Boushy said that he and Hamilton Right to Life welcomed the city's decision, which has yet to be ratified by city council. According to an e-mail from a member of the Hamilton Public Works Committee, sent to Father Slaman of Hamilton Right to Life, the decision will come before the council on June 11.

"Coming on the heels of our complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, this new decision by the Hamilton Director of Transit to allow religious and advocacy messaging in the bus shelters is healthy for a society that values freedom of expression," said Boushy. "We are hopeful that the decision will be ratified by city council. Now, in terms of the whole Right to Life issue, it is important that the public understand that there is absolutely no law whatsoever regulating abortions in Canada. This is a grave injustice that urgently needs to be rectified and I would urge all like-minded persons to call upon their politicians to help the pro-life movement in this regard."

Christians can play identity politics, too. I don't like it on principle, but, as a tactic in the near term, it may be most effective.

HRCs may start hearing more Christian complaints just to prove their "fairness" and increase their survivability.

Get your hands of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been hijacked by progressive, postmodern secularist fundamentalists who think the words contained in this document---especially when it comes to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion---are mere empty containers into which society can pour whatever meaning it chooses. For these people equality is the only right that matters, even if equality before the law gets sacrificed in their identity politics and desire to socially engineer a utopia of rainbow diversity without a whisper of dissent.

I think Pierre Trudeau himself might be rolling over in his grave over what is happening in Robson Square this week. The "living tree model" (the idea that the meaning of the document changes as society progresses) of the constitution has metastasized into the "Feed Me!" plant in Little Shop of Horrors. The rights and freedoms enshrined in the Charter that were supposed to protect us from an overreaching state have been reinterpreted to give the state unaccountable, capricious and draconian control over what Canadians can publish, say, think or even feel.

Most Canadians love the Charter. They love words like rule of law, they love the notion of rights. These words ring in our hearts because they refer to something transcendent, something grand, something about human dignity that is more powerful than the state. They refer to a transcendent notion of justice.

But they do not realize that a powerful political and academic elite has emptied those words of content. They insert whatever meaning they choose into important words like "human rights" and "freedom," then turn their moral relativism into a fundamentalism that makes them the new inquisitors.

So when someone who brags about his dark arts of political spin puts up a suggested advertisement for the Liberal Party that bashes the Conservatives as anti-Charter, I've got news for you. A faction within the Liberal Party, along with the illiberal elites has stolen our Charter and replaced it with a voracious, man-eating plant. Though not all Liberals are anti-Charter, many of them have totally deconstructed the meaning of what we once understood as fundamental freedoms and inherent rights that precede the state, that are grounded in our being made in the image of God. Thank God for truly liberal-minded Liberals like Keith Martin, Dan McTeague and others. I think former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler is also growing increasingly appalled by what's going on.

The illiberal anti-Charter people would replace real justice and the presumption of innocence and rules of evidence with the kind of kangaroo court proceedings we have been witnessing for years in human rights tribunals and finally seeing the light of day in Robson Square this week. These anti-Charter people would marginalize all those Canadians who hold traditional values.

Have you had enough yet?

Remember the Free Trade election?

Brian Mulroney courageously defended free trade despite the lambasting he got in the media, gave a good apologetic for something necessary for our country and won.

Stephen Harper, is this is your "Esther" moment. Were you born for such a time as this? If so, will you answer the call? Or will you shrink from your responsibility to restore our fundamental Charter- enshrined freedoms because you fear being branded as anti-Charter.

TAKE BACK OUR CHARTER.

The freedom of speech election is coming.

No political party may step up to the plate, but we will be looking out for candidates from all parties who get the seriousness of this matter.

The Trooth will out

As the Roos prepare for tomorrow's closing arguments, after having overrooed the objections of the Maclean's lawyers, who are racist and sexist and Islamophobic just by virtue of being white, male and Western, we can expect TROOTH to reign in Roos' findings.

To bad that trooth also seems to reign in academia. It is the postmodern paradigm, this troothiness, no?

But thankfully, according to Ezra, trooth does not reign among the magazine literati in Toronto.

Sad, sad week for Canada in Robson Square.

Sad, sad, sad.

Dear John Bentley Mays---let us pray for you

John Bentley Mays, a far more talented writer than I'll ever be, writes a poignant column in the Catholic Register. Struggling with chronic depression, he has been finding it difficult to pray.

So I will pray for you and I trust my readers will as well.

He writes:

Even for believing Christians — I’m one of them — depression can induce atheism. Like the atheist, all the time, the depressed Christian often has no awareness of God, the splendour of our salvation or the outpouring of grace throughout all creation. The lights go dark, the inner flame of love is snuffed out, God seems impossibly distant, uncaring, inaccessible — if, indeed, He exists at all. Christians who are depressed must struggle constantly against feelings of abandonment in order to believe anything good about God, or about anything else.

Sean Berry nails it

He writes:

What disturbs me the most are the people that agree wholeheartedly with the procedure. Their hatred of Steyn and what he's written has fogged up their glasses. The common defence of the BCHRT that I'm reading is, "Maclean's and Steyn haven't been found guilty of anything yet, so it doesn't matter. It'll all go away, you haters, and you can get back to work."

Are people really that thick? The process in itself is a crime against a democratic society. Hearsay evidence. Shopping for a jurisdiction until you find one with favourable statutes. Filing simultaneous complaints and hoping to get lucky. Using the after-the-fact blog rants of strangers to condemn someone for what they've written. Not being able to face your accuser. Zero rules of evidence.

But really, the biggest crime is the complaint itself. "I didn't like what you wrote, so now I will bring you down." How many people will censor themselves now, just to avoid something like that? How many people will it silence?

The accusation is the conviction, the process is the punishment. Don't they get it? Actually, I think they get it only too well.

Is the Justice Committee motion just a bit of sleight of hand?

Like many of you, I received a form letter this week from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, announcing Rick Dykstra's motion to the Justice Committee to "examine and make recommendations with respect to the CHRC, including its mandate, operations and interpretation and application of provisions relating to section 13 of the CHRA, which addresses hate messages."

Earlier this week, I checked the committee schedules and there are no scheduled meetings for the Justice Committee. That committee has been dysfunctional. I fear that this motion and Keith Martin's attempt to get the committee to look at it are another dead end.

And I am disappointed with Dykstra's commentary to his local newspaper The St. Catharine's Standard.

He said:

“I think knowing exactly how the commission interprets this section, what it means for Canadians, would be very helpful for the public,” the Conservative MP said in explaining his motion.

“And I think there is some public concern about how the commission operates, in particular its investigative techniques.”

Section 13.1 makes it an offence to communicate by phone or Internet any message that is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

The section is at the centre of two high-profile human rights complaints against Maclean’s Magazine and the former publisher of the Western Standard, Ezra Levant, for publishing articles or cartoons some Muslim groups found offensive.

The cases have spurred a freedom of speech debate that includes everyone from extreme right-wing bloggers to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to B.C. Liberal MP Keith Martin.

Martin, in fact, introduced a private member’s bill earlier this year to eliminate or amend Section 13.1.

“We have the right in our magnificent country to be free of slander, discrimination and hate crimes,” Martin wrote on his website. “However, we do not have the right to not be offended.”

Dykstra said he believes a review would be “more prudent than simply eliminating the section.”

Well....simply eliminating the section without a review of the investigative techniques and alleged abuses would not be enough. But this is such a cautious, big-toe-dipped-in-the-water approach, before a dysfunctional committee that will not even meet before the House rises for the summer.

The National Post's John Ivison has more on this today:

Pressure is building in the Conservative caucus to rein in the Canadian Human Rights Commission: nine MPs, including Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, and Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney, have gone on record criticizing the CHRC for operating outside its mandate by hearing cases brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress. This has prompted the Tory MP from St. Catharines, Ont., Rick Dykstra, to introduce a motion calling for the Justice committee to examine the mandate of the CHRC and the way it interprets Section 13.

-snip-

But sources within the government suggest Mr. Nicholson may not have undergone quite the Damascene conversion on the issue that Mr. Martin supposes. One Conservative suggested the Justice Minister is in thrall to his departmental bureaucrats, who do not support overturning Section 13. According to this version of events, Mr. Nicholson has eased pressure within caucus by authorizing a review of the act but has managed to delay action by referring it to a dysfunctional committee that hasn't met in months and isn't likely to convene again until well into the fall. This is because of unrelated paralysis that has seen the Conservative chairman, Art Hangar, march out of the room whenever the Liberals and Bloc push for a vote. Even if the Conservatives do recommend a repeal of Section 13, there are no guarantees it would be endorsed by the rest of the committee: The opposition parties have a majority of members and the Bloc Quebecois and NDP oppose Mr. Martin's bill, as does Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

H/t Ezra Levant

What kind of decision do we expect?

After following Andrew Coyne's and Ezra Levant's live blogging of the bizarre show trial before the B.C. Human Rights Commission, and reading Jay Currie's commentary and that of others, I am beginning to speculate about the possible "findings" or whatever term the troika uses for their decisions.

Is it true that the BCHRT can stick a complainant with costs? Wouldn't that be nice?

Okay, let's see what the permutations are:

1) Dismiss the case with costs, forcing Elmasry and El Habib and the Canadian Islamic Congress to pay for Julian Porter's high-priced shredding of Khurrum Awan, a performance that shows real lawyers prepares well in advance. Of course costs include the rest of the high-priced legal team and all that preparation time.

(I think anyone who expects this result is dreaming in Technicolor. Though those who love revenge movies would applaud this, it might temporarily raise the stature of the BCHRT and leave them free to abuse the next little respondent who lacks the funds to bring in a Julian Porter. ) But this kind of decision would leave the troika open to criticism from the hard-core "human rights" industry.

2) Dismiss the case without costs. Given the kind of "split decisions" we've seen, where perhaps in some kind of garbled notion of fairness some "evidence" was admitted and other "evidence" excluded, I expect some version of this. This would be a crafty decision, because they would be seen to be supporting freedom of speech, but not victimizing the complainants. I would hope though that Maclean's Magazine would sue for costs. It might also pose some PR problems for Maclean's, like Goliath suing David. So just as Julian Porter backed off forcing "Scaredy-pants" to testify, I doubt Macleans would sue for costs.

2A) Same as above, but with a Barbara Hall type admonishment about stereotyping and hurting feelings etc. This is the most likely result I see at this point. The BCHRT will get to have it both ways, as it were. It will dismiss the case so as to look reasonable, because of admitted misrepresentations by the Sock Puppet, and the ghastly lack of focus and lack of preparation in the complainant's bizarre case and the fact that the complainants apparently are not even going to complain about their hurt feelings during the proceedings. But it will still take a stand against "hate" and give Maclean's a public spanking, but not force the magazine to print a rebuttal or enjoin it against writing about Islam again. This would leave no opportunity for Maclean's to appeal to a higher court.

3) Find Maclean's guilty and impose penalties ranging from minimal to draconian. Any of these results leave the case open for appeal, that is, of course, if a proper recording and transcript of the proceedings can be produced.

I'm not a lawyer and I'm not sure of the ins and outs of what kinds of penalties the BCHRT can impose or what they have to impose under a finding of guilt. I do not know if they have the power to force Maclean's to hand over editorial space for a rebuttal, or force the editors and Mark Steyn to take some sensitivity training through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer expert, or whether they will award the Canadian Islamic Congress $30,000 in awards for hurt feelings as a "remedy" for the stereotyping (which is the worst thing that I've heard a witness say about the article, except for Awan's testimony, but the Sock's credibility is lying on the floor like unraveled knitting.

I do not know if they have to, upon a guilty finding (or whatever term they use for violating their thought crimes law) enjoin the magazine from ever publishing on radical Islam again.

I hope there will be some kind of finding of guilty so this case can be appealed to a higher court and we will eventually see the thought crime law struck down. If it is struck down in even one province, perhaps, just as the marriage law got struck down in Ontario and other provinces followed suit, we may see the dominoes moving in a favorable direction for a change.

Pray that this is so.

Also, I wonder whether, on the heels of a BCHRT decision, we will hear from the Canadian Human Rights Commission about whether they will hear the Maclean's case. Since they both investigate and prosecute we would be spared the entertaining antics of Faisal Joseph et. al.
But they have a whole other entertaining cast of characters.

If the CHRC is smart they will dismiss this case and abstain from the Barbara Hall type commentary.

But, as their chief counsel Ian Fine says, there can't be enough laws against hate.




3)

I can't believe this!!!!!! Scaredy-pants!!!!!!!!!

I was just on the phone reading parts of Andrew Coyne's last few posts, doing the different voices and thinking, gee, this might make a great play. The suspense of whether Porter would call the B.C. complainant was keeping me away from my necessary evening stroll or bike ride tonight.

Then I refreshed and found this cliffhanger, which I hope every blogger picks up far and wide:

4:04 PM We’re going to adjuourn for the day! We don’t even know whether we’re calling any more witnesses. If so, we’re back at 10 tomorrow. Otherwise, we hear final arguments on Friday.

Talk about a cliffhanger! Will Porter get to call Habib? Will Joseph cross-examine? Tune in tomorrow… same kangaroo-time, same kangaroo-channel…

Wait! Porter in on his feet: “If Habib and Elmasry are afraid to testify I don’t want them as my witnesses. They’re a pair of scaredy-pants, and…” I swear to God that’s what he said. The proceedings dissolve in even more confusion than usual…

The troubling "recording difficulties" at the show trial

I read somewhere yesterday that the Maclean's defense team was having trouble getting official recordings of the B.C. "Human Rights" Tribunal testimony because of some equipment difficulty.

Has the BCHRT decided to do away with official transcripts from court reporters (with back-up tapes) and only offer digital audio the way the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has?

Duh! Equipment fails. That is why in a real court there is always a court reporter, a living, breathing human being recording every word on one of those little shorthand machines. The recordings are there to assist him or her in putting the final record together, not the other way around.

If there is no official transcript, all the more difficult to appeal a case, to prove to a real court the kind of travesty of justice that goes on in these bodies. I hope the Maclean's team is making their own recordings, maybe even bringing in their own court stenographer. I sure hope yesterday's moments of truth will remain for posterity in an official record.

Some telling details emerge from Maclean's show trial

Here are a few things that have stood out in my readings this morning on the craziness going on in British Columbia regarding the Maclean's Magazine show trial. Call these a compilation of "telling details."

Covenant Zone has a must-read, thoughtful essay here. Check this out:

Khurrum is just an ordinary Canadian guy who went to law school and one day was struck dumb by the Steyn article; he showed it to his non-Muslim boss at the Parkdale legal clinic for low income people in Toronto, and received from her a sympathetic response of shock and outrage. The boss immediately started talking to people and looking into whether this article could be considered criminal hate speech. Heh, that's Parkdale for you...

Long story short, Khurrum and his other friends from law school studied all the relevant Canadian laws and decided that their best response was 1) to demand that Maclean's publish their chosen author and make a cash donation; or 2) they would look into legal remedies. It turned out that the test for criminal hate speech is quite demanding, and so they settled on laying a series of human rights complaints, after asking for and getting the support of Mohammed Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress to give them some kind of institutional legitimacy. (Many bloggers argue that, in turn, Elmasry is using the young lawyers as his own "sock puppets" in some kind of lawfare.)

--snip--

One of the most telling points in the proceedings came when the cell phone of CIC lawyer Joseph Faisal rang loudly. He jumped to turn it off and apologized profusely that this was the "first time in 25 years that's happened". The Chairwoman of the tribunal replied "Make it the last!". The way she said this seemed to me awkward, theatrical, a somewhat exaggerated reaction to a feeling of "what do I say to this?", as if the appropriate way to assert authority in this situation were not, as it were, bred in the bone. An experienced judge, one might imagine, would have sufficient worldly wisdom to be inured to the nuisances of our now inescapably networked lives, such that a certain sardonic humility about human imperfections in attention that cannot be commanded away would enter into any warning.

Then there's Brian Hutchinson's interesting column in today's National Post and another telling glimpse of Faisal Joseph.

Mr. Joseph seized upon the phrase "blog idiots." He turned in his chair and leered at Mr. Levant in the spectator's gallery. Once, twice, thrice. He later used the phrase himself, referring to "the idiot bloggers on the Western Standard." And turned to leer again.

Regrettable conduct, but such was Mr. Joseph's finest moment. The Tribunal panel allowed as evidence the Levant blog posting, and others.

Eeewww!

Of course, read Andrew Coyne's and Ezra Levant's great live-blogging of yesterday, and Jay Currie's overview. Check out Free Mark Steyn for links to everything, and Mark Steyn's site, too.

One thing is clear though, even in a kangaroo court where truth is no defense and high-priced lawyers who traffic in such old-fashioned notions as facts and truth seem strangely dry and irrelevant, the truth did prevail yesterday.

Khurrum Awan admitted to what is basically Ken Whyte's version of what happened that day in the editorial offices of Maclean's: that the law students never suggested a mutually acceptable response, but that these words were a later embellishment (though apparently he tried to infer that Jonathan Kay "inserted" those words into something Awan had written for the National Post. Awan's credibility is in tatters. But of course, the soft racism of low expectations may convince the 'Roo troika to attribute this fudging of the truth to a victim's hurt feelings and Maclean's will still be toast.

Andrew Coyne writes:

1:50 PM Julian Porter begins cross-examining young Awan. He notes off the top that Elmasry’s complaint to the human rights commission was filed April 30, 2007. The meeting with Maclean’s was March 30.

The claim the students have made publicly on a number of occasions, including in their filings to the various human rights commissions to which they took their complaint, is that they had proposed the “reply” to Steyn’s piece be written by a “mutually acceptable” author, the better to show how “unreasonable” Maclean’s had been. Porter rounds on him: “I suggest to you that you never said ‘mutually acceptable’ at that meeting.” He’s caught off guard. He stammers out a concession: they did not.

Kerrannggg!!! As Porter says, “this goes to his credibility.” It’s a peculiarly pointed exchange: Porter was himself at the meeting, as Maclean’s lawyer. So when he says “I suggest you never said” something, the witness is under unusual pressure.

2:00 PM Now we’re looking at a letter Awan wrote in April of 2007 to Brian Segal, president of Rogers Publishing. No mention here of any “mutually acceptable” author, as there had not been in previous communications with Mohamed Elmasry. Likewise at the students’ press conference on December 4, 2007: no “mutually acceptable” mention here. (His defence: we didn’t realize until some days later, when Ken Whyte replied, that Maclean’s disputed his version of what happened at the meeting.) It was only in a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail some time later that the phrase first appears - the phrase he now admits he never used.

Kerranngg! Actually, more like rinngg: it’s Porter’s cellphone. He’s forgotten to turn it off. (Same thing happened yesterday to Joseph. Twice in one hearing must set some sort of record.)

Now Porter returns to the attack. “When did you first publicly admit that you asked for money for a donation” at the Maclean’s meeting? (The money, to be clear, was not to go to the students, but to a race relations foundation for the promotion of religious tolerance.) When was it? Porter supplies the answer: At a press conference on April 30 of this year, when Joe Brean of the National Post asked him about it. At that time, the group’s lawyer, Joseph, said it was only “a nominal” amount.

Awan now says they were considering asking for $10,000, but never got around to naming a figure. He doesn’t think this could be characterized as a “substantial” sum, given the magazine’s resources. He doesn’t know Maclean’s.

2:37 PM We’re going through an interview Awan gave on Mike Duffy Live. He tells Duffy that this isn’t a case of free speech versus minority rights. Rather, he says, Maclean’s can go on publishing what it likes, Steyn can write whatever he likes, just so long as “the Muslim community” gets a right of reply. (I’m paraphrasing. The video of the interview is here.) So really, what they’re proposing (he explains in the interview) is an extension of free speech.

I think I see his point. Every time Maclean’s wants to publish an article some group doesn’t like, they just have to give them an equal amount of space in the magazine. Double the space, at twice the cost to Maclean’s - but zero cost to the complainants. That’s ”free” speech, of a kind.

Ezra slices and dices the testimony in a series of posts. Here's one:

Awan admitted that he made no such offer of a mutually acceptable author. It was to be the CIC's own choice.

Terry Milewski, please check this out

Tarek Fatah made a comment over at Andrew Coyne's live blog of the Maclean's B.C. Human Rights Tribunal trial about a controversial Imam who has made anti-Jewish comments as inflammatory as those of the complainant, Mohammed Elmasry.

Tarek Fatah writes:

Does anyone remember Sheikh Younus Kathrada, the Imam who preached that Jews were “brothers of monkeys and swine”?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/07/21/cleric-rcmp050721.html

Well, what do you know. The good old “monkeys and swine” imam is part of this convoluted Islamist alliance fighting Mackeans.

After explaining the web of relationships, he notes that this could be "guilt by association," and since we are Westerners who believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty, I would caution everyone not to jump to conclusions.
Here are Fatah's exact words:

Convoluted assoications? yes. Guilt by association? Probabaly, but it is not me who is saying all Muslims are one organic body that weeps whenever the boy-band is insulted.

Most interesting.

But I believe a good investigative reporter or someone with a good track record like Milewski, who has investigated various forms of terrorism before, might want to dig a little deeper here and find out exactly what sorts of associations there are and what bearing these associations, lose or otherwise, may have on this case.

The questions I want answered are whether we are witnessing lawfare, a form of soft jihad at work. I know many columnists have already said it is. But I want some good, honest, fact-finding and reporting.

Un- bleepin'- believable

Ezra Levant is live-blogging today's anti-civil rights travesty in British Columbia.

I think I need to go to the gym and calm down.

He writes:

Faisal Joseph tells us what he wants to talk about today.

Not Mark Steyn.

Not Maclean's.

Not anything in their complaint, as filed.

He wants to talk about the blogosphere's response to their human rights complaint. He wants to ask the tribunal to make the criticism stop.

He wants to be politically immune for his censorsious, fascistic, legally abusive ploy.

Andrew Coyne's got a keyboard this morning and doesn't have to blog with his man-sized thumbs. (Thumb size is KDO's secret. They are like children's fingers.)

He writes:

9:36 AM Faisal Joseph up for the complainants. He’s promising to treat us to a tour of some of the seamier parts of the blogosphere. No guilt like guilt by association. He dumped a bunch of material on the Maclean’s side only last night — and apparently some more stuff this morning — which would ordinarily be out of order but not, as by now you will have guessed, here.

Revival coming to Canada--starting in Quebec

Amazing things are happening in Quebec. Amazing things. A revival is coming that is going to sweep across North America. It is going to start in Quebec. It has already started though the signs are hard to discern for the hard of heart. One of the signs is the flourishing lay community Famille Marie-Jeunesse. (pictured singing at a mass at St. Paul Basilica in Toronto last week.) Eight members of this Sherbrooke-based community will be ordained to the priesthood at the International Eucharistic Congress on Friday night June 20. This is going to be a life-changing event for everyone who attends and will spark a move of God that will overflow well-beyond Quebec.

Pete Vere has posted a story about it to Zenit News Agency that looks not only at Quebec but at signs of renewal in the Catholic Church elsewhere in Canada.

Barbara Fraze of the Catholic News Service covered Cardinal Marc Ouellet's plenary address to the Catholic Media Convention in Toronto last week. (Cardinal Ouellet is pictured leaving the mass he celebrated in Toronto during the Catholic Media Convention last week)

The full text of Cardinal Ouellet's homily is here.

The full text of his address to the Catholic Media Convention is here.

Richard K. Ball's "Love Lifted Me"

Upon my return from Toronto, I discovered I had received a CD set in the mail. I am listening to it now, and it is like a balm to my soul.

Instead of feeling dismayed and apoplectic (and feeling my blood pressure rise literally to the stratosphere), as I read the latest offerings on the anti-civil rights travesty going on British Columbia, I am smiling, touched, even chair-dancing now and then.

At first I didn't know why I had received this CD, though often, because of my work as a journalist, I sometimes receive things for review.

Then I realized Richard K. Ball is a glorious freespeecher and winner of my novel The Defilers, in Binky's Free Mark Steyn Contest.

Love Lifted Me is wonderful. Go out by buy this CD. Support this Charlottetown-based artist who sings the Gospel in a way that will bring joy to your heart, peace to your spirit and a spring to your step.

Lots to read this morning on the farce in British Columbia

Head on over to Ezra Levant's site for a slew of posts on the farce before the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal. FreeMarkSteyn also has numerous good links, as does Mark Steyn's site Steynonline.com.

I'm glad Terry Milewski was the CBC journalist covering the tribunal for The National. Though I don't know him personally, I have always had respect for his work. I was not disappointed.

I also thought the reporter who covered the story on the World at Six last night did a decent job.

Also read Brian Hutchinson's great piece in the National Post.

VANCOUVER -- In the subterranean bowels of a provincial courthouse, a bizarre and frightening spectacle starts to unfold.

At issue are the pointed musings of Mark Steyn, a journalist and author living in the United States. A lengthy excerpt from his controversial book, America Alone, was published two years ago in Toronto-based Maclean's magazine, a weekly publication owned by Toronto-based Roger's Publishing Ltd.

The book excerpt ran as a cover story, entitled "Why the Future Belongs to Islam," and argued that Western democracy is threatened by the spread of Islam. In response, a human rights complaint was made here, in British Columbia, by an electrical engineer living in Waterloo, Ont.

That's the bizarre part, or one slice of it. None of the main players starring in this quasi-judicial drama actually live or work in B. C. Not Mr. Steyn, not the editors responsible for Maclean's, and not Mohamed Elmasry, a Muslim who launched a complaint to the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal on behalf of all Muslims in this province.

What's amazing to me is that the Socks and their puppet masters complain that Mark Steyn, by writing about a dangerous minority within Europe's Muslim population (even though he clearly differentiated among Islamist extremists and ordinary, law-abiding believers), is accused of defaming all Muslims, exposing all of them to hate because he does not recognize that the Islamic community is diverse and not-monolithic.

Yet the Canadian Islamic Congress purports to represent all the Muslims who live in British Columbia. As if one Muslim can speak for all, and thus is one Muslim is offended then all are. Who then is saying the Muslim community is monolithic and non-diverse, pray tell? I am scratching my head here.

As Ezra writes: who died and made CIC president Mohammed Elmasry the Muslim pope?

High-priced lawyers useless in this setting---send in a comedian

John Pacheco may have a point. He writes:

You can think of this tribunal [the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal trying Maclean's] as the transitionary phase from an advanced Parliamentary Commonwealth Democracy to a cross between Judge Wapner and the Sharia Courts of Saudi Arabia.

Any fool can see this is going to end very badly for Macleans. The end result will be the same, so why waste all the dough on six high-priced lawyers? What did today cost Macleans? $500 bucks/hour * 8 hours * 6 lawyers plus expenses. That’s a cool $30K - at least. And that’s just today’s costs.

That’s why they should pull their lawyers now and send in a comedian for some relief - although one could successfully argue that the proceedings were already a joke, I suppose. But at least we’ll all get some bona fide laughs out of it. Better yet, why not just fold up the tent and let Ezra have a go since he’s already there? If we’re gonna lose, let’s play it smart on this round and suck all the political juices out of it for what it’s worth.

Andrew Coyne living-blogging Maclean's trial

Go here and refresh often. Andrew writes:


10:19 AMSection 7.1 of the BC Human Rights Code is the relevant legal text, prohibiting exposure to hate.
Free speech, in his humble submission, is a “red herring.”

10:20 AM“Proceedings before the human rights tribunal are considerably less formal than before a court,” the chair advises. Yes, indeed: unburdened by stuffy old rules of evidence, for example…

Well here's a "well-balanced" MSM piece on the Maclean's trial

Okay, so the Vancouver Province chimed in this morning with an advance story.

Salim Jiwa writes:

Representatives of B.C. Muslims are seeking a ruling from the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over a 2006 Maclean's magazine article they say discriminated against them and exposed the community to hatred and contempt.

The complaint was filed jointly by Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry of Ottawa and Abbotsford cardiologist Dr. Naiyer Habib, a B.C. director of the congress.

At issue is an Oct. 23, 2006, article that suggested Muslim demographics will soon enable them to overrun countries in Europe and North America.

"The article is flagrantly anti-Muslim," said the complainants, who also claim it implicitly and explicitly states that Muslims are part of a global conspiracy to take over Western societies and that Muslims should be viewed "through this lens as the enemy."

Elmasry and Habib said the "inflammatory" article violates the religious rights of Muslims living in B.C.

Though Jiwa mentions that the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association both have intervened in this case, he does not quote them.

Nor does he get a quote from Mark Steyn or Maclean's.

H/t Mark Steyn.

Why the mainstream media is not all over the Steyn and Levant HRC cases

I woke up this morning, expecting the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post to carry not only editorials and columns about the Mark Steyn and Maclean's Magazine show trial starting today before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, but also big, front page news advancers by journalists, perhaps Joseph Brean who has written the most so far.

Nada.

And these are the papers that have been among the most responsible in covering the human rights abuses of so-called human rights commissions.

Well, maybe CBC Radio senior producer Peter Kavanaugh was onto something when he was asked about why the mainstream media has not been all over this issue.

Kavanaugh (in the centre) was part of a mainstream news panel at the Catholic Media Convention in Toronto last week that included CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson and the Post's Charles Lewis.

LifeSiteNews.com reported on this panel here, though about another topic.

Kavanaugh said journalists value freedom of speech, but this value was competing with another value, that of protecting vulnerable minorities. He said Muslims are widely seen by journalists as a vulnerable minority and Maclean's, Mark Steyn and the National Post seen as being "mean" (may not have been his exact word, but it was a word like this) to Muslims.

I would not jump to conclusions to say Kavanaugh shares that perception, but I think he is on to something about most mainstream journalists.

But I also think there is a vast, vast ignorance about what's going on. I think that if journalists actually read the Justice Department's intervention in support of the Canadian Human Rights Act's subsection 13 and saw that truth is no defence, nor is one's intent, they might wake up. It's rather disgusting to me, actually, that some kind of animus towards conservative writers like Steyn is making them ignore the wider implications. I suppose as well, many are concentrating on bogus scandals like the Cadman affair and Maxime Bernier's ex-girlfriend's breasts. As Mark Steyn wrote recently, he'd have a hell of a lot more support if is writing were obscene or blasphemous about Christianity.

Before I left for Toronto, while waiting for the president of the Ukraine to come to a Holodomor Memorial on the steps of Parliament Hill, I asked a reporter why the Globe and Mail had not covered the human rights issue as a news story. He kind of shrugged it off, as if the deep pockets of Maclean's somehow mitigated the abusiveness of the process. He also insisted that complainants could get their costs covered. Well, maybe in some jurisdiction that I haven't heard of, but I reminded him that Calgary Bishop Fred Henry was left paying thousands in legal fees even though the complaints against him were eventually dropped. He told me he thought the complaints were ridiculous, mind you, but otherwise the story was kind of ho hum. All was well in Canada.

For those who are not ignorant of what's going on, I wonder whether there is a weird Stockholm syndrome at work. Rather than see they are being held hostage by their fear of radical Islam, (and tiptoeing so as not to offend or blaspheme so foreign correspondents won't get kidnapped orworse) they have displaced their fear and loathing onto the people who write about it. They are like the bank robbery hostages or hijacked plane passengers who get pissed off at police for shooting their captors. They have identified with their captors, even formed a bond with them, for their own psychological survival. If the captors see that I like them, they will like me and I will come out of this okay they tell themselves.

Most of it, though, is massive ignorance I'm afraid. I don't think most journalists can even conceive that we have such a shadowy, parallel "justice system" that can hand out severe penalties without any of the normal protections in a criminal or even civil law court.

Lloyd Robertson had left the panel discussion by the time the second round of Q & A started, so he did not comment publicly on this issue. But stay tuned to CTV National News. Ottawa Bureau Chief Bob Fife may have something very soon on this issue.

I hope tonight. We'll see.

Interesting pre-papal visit analysis

John Allen Jr. and George Weigel both make for interesting speakers at this Pew Forum event.

A chimp "son" to get human rights but an unborn child, uh uh

This is a great piece at The Politic. Read it all. (h/t Jay Currie):

Over in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights has agreed to hear the case of a British woman who wants to adopt a 26-year old chimp and would require the homonid to legally be declared a human being in order to do so. In essence, this is the latest volley fired off in Europe by a movement that wants to extend human rights to other species. More locally, the York University Federation of Students (YFS) passed a motion that would ban all non-religious clubs from holding pro-life views on campus. When asked to justify her decision, motion sponsor Gilary Massa responded by saying that every group against abortion was “sexist” and should be suppressed for going against our long-held norm (leave it to a 20-year old to think that a decision made in 1988 is long held…). The two might not seem very related, but they are, and are in fact the latest example of how the secularist, anti-family agenda that Western nations have been engaging in over the past 50 years is starting to chew itself up.

(. . . .)

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

John Allen Jr. interviews Canada's Apostolic Nuncio

While in Toronto last week, John Allen Jr. interviewed Canada's Apostolic Nuncio Luigi Ventura and Toronto's Archbishop Thomas Collins on the changes in the Canadian Catholic Church in the National Catholic Reporter.

NCR: You've been in Canada seven years now. What has impressed you?

Archbishop Ventura: Canada is trying to build a society that has its own identity, but it's a changing identity. Part of what has to be defined is the place of religion, especially in public life. I think there's a growing awareness that religion does have importance for public life, and for political life, though not in the sense of direct political influence. … Sometimes, however, there's a kind of secular ideology being pushed, which appears to be neutral, but in reality is imposing a view on people. The danger, and I phrase it as a danger, is to build a state that claims to give everything to people, but in reality takes everything away.

NCR: What do you see happening in the Canadian church?

Archbishop Ventura:There's movement, particularly among the young generation … you can see that they're looking for something. I sense a new desire to be church without what I would call the "Oedipus complex" of the past. By that, I mean an instinct that hates the father and mother, and is constantly trying to get away from them. These people aren't rebelling against a paternalistic church that provided everything to them, and now they want to throw it away and be on their own. There's been some of that in Canada, this sense of wanting to be free from the church. Today's youth, however, have no point of reference. They have everything they want, except a father-figure that teaches and guides them. They're looking for positive models to fill their hearts. You find Catholic youth today, some organized and some not, interested in recovering a strong sense of faith.

Sometimes there's a generation gap, even among pastoral agents, between the older generation and a new one. These younger Catholics are sometimes called the "John Paul II Generation" because he started this movement, and he gave them great enthusiasm. It's continuing … the identification of being Christian, being Catholic, prayer, fidelity, universality, the sense of being part of a great family of faith, even with all its weakness.

NCR: Sometimes young people who fit the profile you're describing are labeled 'conservative' or 'traditionalist.' Do you find them to be so?

Archbishop Ventura: No, they're not. If you're using these terms, you're referring to an ideological frame of reference. You already have a particular scheme in mind. Instead, you have to judge from the signs, from what is going on, from the goodness and the witness they're giving. Sometimes, the perspective is that if they think like you, they're good. If they don't, they're fanatics, they're integralists, and so on. … I think it's a matter of identity, of being what you are, the authenticity of being Christian and being Catholic. That doesn't mean you to have to be closed or defensive, far from it. It's a matter of living the gift we have received, without excluding or condemning anybody.

Canada is very, very blessed that Archbishop Ventura is here among us.

News could come after Lambeth on Traditional Anglican Communion

The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) could hear sometime after the Lambeth Conference a response to the formal request it made to come into communion with the Holy See.

The National Catholic Register reports:

Meanwhile, discussions at the Vatican on devising a possible structure for the Traditional Anglican Communion to come into communion with Rome are understood to be nearing completion.

The communion is a breakaway group of 400,000 Anglicans opposed to women’s ordination.

However, during his May 5 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Williams asked that any potential announcement be delayed until after the Lambeth Conference

.

The article also said the Canterbury Anglican Communion faces a choice:

Ultimately, he said, “it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong? Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium — Catholic and Orthodox — or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century?”

“At the moment it is somewhere in between,” Cardinal Kasper continued, “but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions.”

Cardinal Kasper said he hoped “certain fundamental questions” would be clarified at the Lambeth Conference so that dialogue will be possible.

“I think that it is not sustainable to keep pushing decision-making back because it only extends the crisis,” the cardinal said.