Time Immortal

Bishop Fred Henry has tangled with the Alberta Human Rights Commission before, over remarks he made concerning gay marriage, and only avoided conviction by offering a clarification of what was said that apparently satisfied the plaintiffs to a sufficient degree. My own recollection of the incident is fuzzy, but I seem to remember that the clarification was nothing even remotely close to an endorsement of gay marriage.

Be that as it may, the good bishop has produced a scathing letter to Alberta premier Ed Stelmach, concerning the AHRC and its recent ruling against Red Deer pastor Stephen Boissoin.

Dear Premier Stelmach:

I have raised the issue of the Alberta Human Rights Commission several times with you in the past 18 months. On each of those occasions, you said that you understood the issues and shared my concerns. However, the situation is continuing to deteriorate across our country and the various levels of governments are seemingly non-responsive.

…

The conflict between social pressure and the demands of right conscience can lead to the dilemma either of abandoning a profession or of compromising one’s convictions.

Faced with that tension, despite the ruling of the commission, we must remember that there is a middle path that opens up before workers who are faithful to their conscience. It is the path of conscientious objection, which ought to be respected by all, especially legislators.

Every person has the right to have their religious beliefs reasonably accommodated.

Each judgment emanating out of our various human right commissions seems to be more brazen and bizarre than the one that preceded it. However, for inane stupidity and gross miscarriage of justice our own Alberta Human Rights Tribunal deserves to take first prize for its treatment of Stephen Boissoin.

June 2008: The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal fined Stephen Boissoin, $5,000.

Section 30 of the Alberta Human Rights Act states: “Evidence may be given before a human rights panel in any manner that the panel considers appropriate, and the panel is not bound by the rules of law respecting evidence in judicial proceedings.”

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The tribunal effectively stripped Boissoin of his right to freedom of speech. “Mr. Boissoin . . . shall cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.”

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The tribunal decided to extract a further pound of flesh by way of public humiliation. “Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. provide [Dr. Darren Lund] with a written apology for the article in the Red Deer Advocate which was the subject of this complaint.” What happens if Lund is not satisfied with the apology?

Mr. Premier, we have talked enough about the inadequate provisions of and appointment to the Alberta Human Rights Tribunals. It is time to repeal Section 3(1)(b) of the Alberta Human Rights Act and to protect the rights of religious freedom. Every person has the right to make public statements and participate in public debate on religious grounds.

The ruling against Pastor Boissoin was particularly egregious, and essentially amounted to forcing the man to recant some of his deeply-held beliefs; it was both an outrage and an absurdity, and highly offensive to anyone who places any value in the teachings of the Christian Religion. Bishop Henry has spoken out on divisive issues in the past, and his voice is a welcome addition to this cause.

Update: Welcome, Steynians! Binky raises an excellent point concerning how involved Catholics seem to be in the free speech struggle, especially when compared to the relative lack of vocal outpourings on the matter from Protestants. If your priest or preacher has spoken out on this issue, make sure to congratulate him or her for having done so. If your priest or preacher hasn’t spoken out on this issue…maybe take him or her aside for a moment to ask why.

We Christians, especially, have a real stake in this whole affair, and the body of Christ should be united on this issue. It should also speak out as one against the abuses of the HRCs.

Ezra Levant is in a positively giddy mood after having posted, in its entirety, the letter that got Red Deer Christian pastor Stephen Boissoin convicted by the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

I feel like a dashing rogue, like the Scarlet Pimpernel. Now I know why men ride motorcycles; now I know how it must feel to sport a moustache, to wear a tattoo (and not just the Chinese pictograph for ginger beef, but a tough one, a home-made one, that says “mom”).

There’s something ineffable about being a free man, about saying what you want, about not being afraid of what someone else thinks.

It feels pretty good.

I’d encourage you to try it.

Go ahead.

Publish Rev. Stephen Boissoin’s hate crime. I don’t care if you’re Christian, or gay, or both. I don’t care if you agree with it or not. Just republish it. Do it because you’re not supposed to do it. Because and Ed Stelmach and Darren Lund say you can’t. Do it because the Red Deer Advocate caved in and copped a plea bargain, instead of fighting like Rev. Boissoin (and Maclean’s and Mark Steyn) did.

Do it to show that you have natural rights that predate, and exceed, any “human rights” given or taken away by Alberta’s human rights commission.

Do it to show that you’re alive. To feel alive. To show that democracy and freedom are still alive.

I have to tell you, I feel great. I’m going to post it again, right now.

Hey, why not? I need to drop a few pounds!

Homosexual Agenda Wicked

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Stephen Boissoin

You know, Grace did tell me, the other night, that she thought I looked thinner.

Margaret Wente gets it too:

The truth is, we are a nation of cowerers and wimps. We’d rather censor speech than allow feelings to be hurt. We live in fear that a few obscure bigots will incite an orgy of violence and send an entire civil society crashing to its knees.

Why are we wasting time and money dragging disgraced native leader David Ahenakew through the courts? Back in 2002, he likened Jews to a “disease” and was immediately ostracized from polite society.

That should have been enough. Instead, he was tried and convicted in the courts on a charge of willfully promoting hatred. The verdict was overturned because it wasn’t clear whether he was being willful, simply deranged or drunk. So now, we’re going to try him all over again.

Are anti-Semites a threat to public safety? Here in North America, the answer is surely no, so long as they don’t go round firebombing synagogues. Are anti-homosexuals? No again, so long as they’re not physically engaged in gay-bashing. So long as equality before the law is the law of the land, we don’t need hate-speech laws to protect people. And no matter how words hurt, there’s a difference between words and blows.

This distinction appears to have been lost on Alberta’s Human Rights Commission [HRC], which recently ruled against a conservative Christian who’d written a letter to the Red Deer Advocate in which he called gays “immoral.” The commission ruled that his letter was “likely to expose homosexuals to hatred and/or contempt,” and even linked it to the beating of a gay teenager, acknowledging the link was “circumstantial.”

Kathy provides follow-up:

Which is what I’ve been saying for years.

Attempts to engage the Average Canadian in the fight for free speech is a waste of effort. The Average Canadian has either considered the issue and sided with the wimps, or he hasn’t considered the issue at all and by default has sided with the idiots.

The Average Canadian cares only about lottery tickets, mortgage rates, plasma tvs, donuts and peewee hockey. Don’t waste your time trying to engage or convert them.

The only hopeless causes I waste my breath on are the lapsed Catholics in my immediate and extended family, because I still think those are battles worth fighting. If my fellow Canadians are too complacent to notice that their freedom of expression is evaporating all around them, that’s not my concern — I will rage against in on their behalf, with no expectation that they’ll ever grow a clue as to what all the fuss was even about in the first place. Sometimes, that’s just the role one is called to play.

Yes, it would be easier if more people actually tried to address the issue, but it’s important enough that, even if the ones who have spoken out already are all that will speak out, nobody championing the inalienable right of every Canadian to freedom of expression can afford to fall silent until the issue is resolved.

And it will be resolved in one of two ways: either we Canadians will have freedom of expression, or we won’t. It will either be given back, or revoked entirely.