Posted on 07/08/2008 7:42:09 AM PDT by ZGuy
Alberta Pastor Steve Boissoin has filed an appeal to the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal ruling that convicted him of hate speech. The pastor was found guilty last November of having written a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate that was "likely" to expose homosexuals to hatred.
The appeal was filed on June 26 with the Queen's Bench of Alberta.
A hearing has preliminarily been set for September 9, although that date could change during negotiations between the involved parties.
LifeSiteNews spoke with Boissoin's attorney, Gerald Chipeur, who said that he is confident that the court will grant the appeal and overturn the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal's decision.
"We are very optimistic, because the Constitution is so clear," said Chipeur. "We were surprised to have lost before the Tribunal, but we believe that the courts will conclude that there has been a violation of the constitutional rights of our client. We feel very confident in our arguments, and we do expect the courts to intervene and reverse the decision."
Chipeur said his confidence was based on the fact that, "the courts have always seen themselves as the defenders of the oppressed. The context and the experience of the courts will lead them to accept our arguments."
Boissoin's appeal seeks a reversal of the Tribunal's decision as well as the awarding of appropriate damages.
Last month the Alberta Tribunal issued a remedy ruling that ordered Boissoin to pay $7,000 in fines, to never speak disparagingly about homosexuality or about the complainant Darren Lund, and to apologize to Lund in a letter to be published in the Red Deer Advocate. Besides the sum of the fines, Boissoin has also had to spend many tens of thousands of dollars in defending himself against Lund's complaint since the case began.
The appeal filed with the Queen's Bench criticizes the Tribunal's decision on numerous points, including the nature of the remedy ruling, for which the Tribunal is accused of having "exceeded the limits of its jurisdiction and the constraints of law, natural justice and the Charter."
In particular the appeal criticizes the Tribunal for "awarding damages to Darren Lund and Janet Dodd, neither or whom were mentioned in the Complaint or victimized or injured by the Letter," amongst other points.
As Chipeur explained, it is also highly unusual for the Tribunal to have ordered Boissoin, in its remedy ruling, not to speak negatively about Lund, when Boissoin was never accused of having done so in the first place. "Our client wasn't speaking in the past in that way, so we're shocked to find that kind of limitation in place when our client was not accused of doing that, and, in fact, did not do that."
Chipeur concluded his interview with LifeSiteNews, saying that, in his opinion, the Human Rights Commissions, in prosecuting "hate speech" at all, have turned human rights laws "on their head" and have made them "a weapon against the individual."
"I find the [Boission] decision to be frankly an aberration after a long history over the last two decades of the courts standing up for freedom of religion and expression based upon the Charter," he said. "Ever since 1982 there's been a new approach which is individual freedom comes first, and it doesn't matter what the government wants to do, the government must respect individual freedom. And that has generally been the trend."
"But over the last year there has been a reversal of that trend," he continued. "It's surprising that human rights laws, which were also meant to protect individuals have in fact been misused, turned on their head, and used to take away freedom.
"When you apply human rights laws to landlords and employers, organizations that are in positions of power, you can see how, yeah, that makes sense. They have a position of power and we need to defend the powerless. But when you take those same human rights laws, and instead of applying them to government or to employers or landlords, we now start using them as a means to have a witch hunt in the community, and start to control what people think and say, then you can easily see how what was intended to be a protection for the individual then becomes in fact a weapon against the individual."
I say we swap out Alberta for Massachusetts (given that Albertans are for it (those not can move to BC)). That way they’d have a stronger right to free speech (and so would we).
Freedom of speech has been abolished in Canada.
Every now and then I think that things are getting so bad in the US that I might consider moving to another country, and then I read this kind of thing. The reality is that totalitarism is getting much worse everywhere in the world, with the possible exceptions, ironically, of China, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran, where they did not have much freedom to begin with.
Hate speech? He probably quoted the Bible. ...horror of horrors.
Hey Alberta, listen up.
Darren Lund is a filthy sodomite sinner. His soul will be dammed if he doesn’t repent and seek forgiveness.
Huh?
Must be lawyerspeak. No way he actually believes that.
Yes, fascism has come to Canada. The thing that’s so scary is that there was no election. The liberal, diversity-elitists simply established it through administrative law. That’s what will happen here.
The vangard of a Canadian type fascism here will begin with Congress authorizing rules to combat “global warming”. There will be administrators, coast to coast, who will hold star chambers for accused violators. It will cost a small fortune to fight these charges.
Soon after, speech rules will follow to protect “diversity”. Conservativism will simply be administered out of official existence.
Soon there will be homosexual groups protesting at Sunday church services to protect “diversity”.
It’s coming, twenty years at the outside.
See my tag line.
This guy must prepare to go all the way with this, if all the way means jail or a crippling civil suit or whatever it means. What he can not do is back down, and I have seen no evidence he intends to.
I can only hope that when “human rights commissions” try to establish themselves here (and it could be sooner than most people realize) that we’ll do a better job of defending freedom, and barring that, that we’ll have the courage to face the music and take this thing all the way to its necessary and final outcome.
Coming soon to the USA.
What is worse, an Islamic state along our northern border or Canada?
Maybe he should seek political asylum here. He is living in fear of persecution for exercising his freedoms of religion and speech.
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