Canada Ping!
Posted on 03/04/2013 1:04:47 PM PST by Squawk 8888
On Wednesday , Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that the government has the power to censor anyone who publicly says anything “likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt.”
Except that hate is a natural human emotion. It can no more be banned than love can be banned.
Bill Whatcott, a self-styled Christian evangelist, was the target of such a prosecution.
Twelve years ago, he was charged with hate speech because of his hobby: Handing out hand-scrawled flyers criticizing gay sex, and calling homosexuals “sodomites.”
Whatcott is an odd bird; when he was young, he says, he engaged in gay sex himself, and drugs too, but has since found Jesus.
He argued that, even if his flyers were “hateful” — whatever that means — as a Canadian, he has freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
Which just happen to be the first and second freedoms listed in our Charter of Rights. The counterfeit “human right not to be offended” is not.
But the Supreme Court had no time for Whatcott’s religion. It said the phrase “sodomite” was hateful, and even though that word comes from the Bible, it was illegal for Whatcott to write what he did. The courts threw out the religion defence, “allowing the dissemination of hate speech to be excused by a sincerely held belief would, in effect, provide an absolute defence and would gut the prohibition of effectiveness,” the court wrote.
And it’s right. Any government that respected freedom of religion would not be able to censor a man’s beliefs as the court just did.
But Christians are the one group in society that it’s still acceptable to discriminate against. In the 36 years these censorship laws have been on the books, only Christians have ever been prosecuted — never a Muslim, Sikh or Tamil extremist, though Canada has its fair share of those.
The court didn’t just ban hateful religious views. It banned hateful speech that was objectively, scientifically true. As in, indisputable facts, if they might cause someone to hate someone else. As the judges put it, “not all truthful statements must be free from restriction.”
We lived through a time like that once. It was called the Dark Ages. We “restricted” scientists like Galileo for daring to suggest that the Earth rotated around the Sun — a fact considered offensive in 1615. We emerged from this censorship through a period called the Enlightenment, when science and skepticism allowed us to question anything — even if feelings were hurt. Especially if they were hurt, actually.
Perhaps our Supreme Court would be so kind as to publish a list of prohibited books, like the Vatican’s infamous Index, so we know in advance what truths we are not allowed to say in Canada.
Why did the court do this? Why infringe on our freedom of speech and religion? What was so dangerous about Bill Whatcott — a goofy and harmless eccentric who has likely turned more people against his cause than to it, through his crudeness?
Let me quote the court’s excuse: “As the majority becomes desensitized by the effects of hate speech, the concern is that some members of society will demonstrate their rejection of the vulnerable group through conduct. Hate speech lays the groundwork for later, broad attacks on vulnerable groups. These attacks can range from discrimination, to ostracism, segregation, deportation, violence and, in the most extreme cases, to genocide ...”
So if we don’t stop Whatcott from handing out his flyers, we’ll be deporting and murdering gays in no time. Even though that hasn’t happened in the 12 years he’s been at it. Even though that violence is against real laws like the Criminal Code.
The court’s excuse is a bizarre fantasy, without a scintilla of evidence to suggest it could happen. But it’s also a glimpse of what the court thinks of regular Canadians: We’re all just one pamphlet away from turning into a violent mob.
Only our morally superior judges can be trusted to look at pamphlets without turning into Nazis. Mere citizens can’t be trusted with those flyers. Or the Bible. Or the wrong facts.
Canada Ping!
the left are the NAZIS/Communists of today and not just on their views but how they close down free speech and religion.
Rules for radicals
commie rules of 1963
“likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt.”
BS.
They mean “likely to offend a liberal”. You can hate and have contempt for the Christian church all you want.
Me? I say what I want to say, and do what I want to do. Devil take the hindmost.
It's amazing what you can get away with.
/johnny
What is more hateful? To jail someone for correctly calling a person a sodomite OR correctly calling them a sodomite?
No truer words were spoken: How can you have love without
hate? How can you have light without darkness? How can you have up without down?
No truer words were spoken: How can you have love without
hate? How can you have light without darkness? How can you have up without down?
How are they going to get around banning the Bible-or is that on the agenda already? Because there are many verses in the Bible referring to sodomites and calling sodomy an abomination. How are they going to avoid banning the Bible? Or are they really so messed up that they will readily do so?
Wich leads to another question-what about the Koran? It calls for death to infidels-any non-Muslim-it calls for decapitation, cutting off hands, violence to women. If the Bible is banned, what will that mean for the Koran? I’m sure they’ll find a way to say “but that’s different”.
I can't wait to get home.....and I am a Massachusetts resident.
The author of this article has her heart in the right place in spite of her historical ignorance.
If only Canada’s relative fiscal sanity carried over to real Civil Rights (like guns and speech).
Canada is only 19 miles across the water from me. I can see Victoria from my living room. I am looking at Canada right this minute. I occasionally get closer to Canada when I am on the water, fishing. I’d like to see more of Canada and spend some of my tourist money there, but they won’t allow me to bring my guns.
I used to make fun of Canada, until it became painfully obvious that our own country is in the toilet and in many ways, far more liberal than they are....
EVEN if God had left out His warning in the bible, I would still consider homosexuality a filthy perversion of the mentally ill.
err... Sodomite is what they are. The fine word, ‘Gay’, has been destroyed and shuffled out of our lexicon to be used only when describing an abomination and perverted relationships... Sodomites, so to speak...
Sodomy is merely a description of what homosexuals do. Calling homosexuals sodomites is about as hateful as calling truck drivers truckers, or calling liberals whiners.
This happening goes to show how people at any level can abuse others human rights. To many of these ‘wolves in sheep clothing use their human rights to eliminate those rights of/for others.I’m beginning to think/believe that such situations cannot be dealt with mere pussyfoot backtalk. The backfire needs to include the highest of courts which are nothing more that social adjusters opposed to people of consensual law.
BM
You must be staying in one of the larger cities. The worst is Ottawa.
Where in Canada are you? Depending on your answer, it may be like someone saying they've been in Chicago for three weeks and they hate the United States.
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