Time Immortal

I echo BCF’s question: can’t they both lose?

Fred Phelps is the lunatic in command of the Westboro Baptist Church, a lunatic-fringe religious cult (I refuse to call them “Christian”) that runs websites with such lovely names as “God HatesFags”, “GodHatesCanada“, and so forth. A more hateful man — and a less fitting witness for Christ — you would be hard-pressed to find. The Westboro cult are known from their habit of protesting the hell out of everything they disagree with.

They revel in the deaths of American soldiers, proudly proclaim that the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed by God, and claim that homosexuals are “worthy of death.” Not a nice bunch.

Conversely, Darren Lund is the anti-Christian activist and wannabe censor who hauled pastor Stephen Boissoin before the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The complaint was decided in his favour, and pastor Boissoin was essentially ordered to renounce his Christian beliefs as a result (an order he has not complied with, of course). Also not a nice sort.

And it looks like there’s going to be an activist vs. activist cage match in Red Deer, Alberta, coming up!

WBC will picket The Laramie Project - at
6:30 to 7:30 p.m. - Friday & Saturday,
August 8 & 9 - at The Matchbox Theatre,
Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

Darren Lund is organizing a counter-protest.

Oh, this should be good. Someone, please get this on camera!

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Syed Soharwardy would appear to have swung his opinion around to the side of right, at least as far as Canada’s human rights commissions are concerned.

When I initiated my complaint against Mr. Levant, I saw human rights commissions as a non-violent means of resolving differences among Canadians.

I was not aware of the controversies between the commissions and Canada’s faith communities. I am thinking specifically of my friend Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary.

Upon learning about the difficulties he and other faith communities have encountered with the commissions, I withdrew my complaint against Mr. Levant.

One of the reasons I chose Canada as my adopted homeland is because of our country’s great respect for religious freedom.

In Canada, I am free to be good Canadian and a good Muslim. There is no contradiction between the two.

In listening to the experiences of Bishop Henry and Pastor [Stephen Boissoin], I realized how precious religious freedom is to our country and how easily freedom is lost.

Strange words to hear from the man who took Ezra Levant to the Alberta HRC over the Muhammed cartoons…but if they are genuine, they are welcome, and it is thus good that he has shifted his thinking.

Update: Welcome, Steynians![image:6999:i:s=0:l=http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com]

The Alberta Human Rights Commission hasn’t quite gotten to that point, and so is not quite on par with e.g. the government of Iran. However, it should be noted that the lengths that the AHRC is demanding that Christians go to in order to distribute materials or host a teaching retreat certainly smacks of the various controls and pressures that the Soviet state exerted on the Russian churches.

Consider:

The couple was very concerned about their freedoms here in Canada because they’re offering a teaching on Biblical sexuality that is based in the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) and a small part of their teaching does address homosexuality as sin. They were thinking about cancelling due to risk of prosecution but I encouraged them to keep it in the church and they should be ok. Still apprehensive, the couple decided to contact the Alberta Human Rights Commission to enquire about the legalities surrounding their presentation. You can read the phone log of the conversation with Ralph Roman an officer of the AHRC below.

An interesting point here is that this couple was advised by Ralph Roman to get a lawyer to draft a consent form and to also have the person declare that they will keep it private and not make the information public.” …PLUS…, she was advised to have the curriculum reviewed by the Police. Ralph Roman went on to inform her that even with a consent form there was still no guarantee that a complaint could not be filed IF someone was offended….like a teacher for instance.

…

He said the following recommendations were the responsibility of the people who invited me, not my responsibility.

2. Ask the church to get a signed consent form from everyone, parents and children, everyone, stating that they are not forced to attend and are there of their own free will. Later he added that this consent should be drawn up by a lawyer who is familiar with the human rights Laws.

…

4. The church needs to contact the education people and take a curriculum of the program and demonstrate that it is an educational program that is not unwelcome by the group there and everyone is there by consent. Also, the church needs to ask the education people if a license is required. At this point Ralph was uncertain and seemed to think a license would be helpful if problems occurred.

5. The church needs to contact the police to make sure they do not view the program as bordering on criminal activity—need to show them the curriculum so they know what is going on and do not arrive on the scene.

I told Ralph I would be dealing with the “hookup mentality” of this generation and teaching abstinence. He said that is a religious belief that lots of people have, but it cannot be forced on anyone and not taught to anyone who is not a part of the group.

I then told Ralph that the church had already distributed a CD of mine to each of their families to prepare for the retreat that had some statements on it about homosexuals. He said that they needed a consent form from each family that this was not unwelcome material and that their kids would not be talking about any of it in the schools.

Welcome to Alberta. You have papers, yes? Papers please!

So now it appears that it is legitimate for the state (here taken to mean the province of Alberta) to infringe upon, and to regulate, religious expression, subjecting each and every aspect of it to supervision and approval by the relevant state organ?

Good gravy…what country is this?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

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.”

…

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.”

…

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.

BCF links to an article by Russ Brown, a professor of law at the University of Alberta (my alma mater) has an article up on the Faculty of Law blog concerning Pastor Stephen Boissoin’s “conviction” by the AHRC. And while Prof. Brown doesn’t agree with Boissoin’s views, he definitely understands Voltaire:

An earlier post referred to a recent case in British Columbia and argued that the functionaries who staff the country’s human rights commissions have no competence to determine the constitutional limits of expression.

The problem is not, of course, confined to British Columbia. The Alberta case involving Ezra Levant is notorious, and now comes the Boisson case - in which the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission ordered a youth pastor in Red Deer to write an apology abjuring (I presume untruthfully) his views on homosexuality and has also ordered him to refrain from making “disparaging” remarks about homosexuals. (It has been observed that for him to give a sermon in his church citing the biblical injunction against homosexuality probably violates the Commission’s order).

…

What is astonishing about the Commission’s order is that it goes beyond what is, in my view, the already illegitimate regulation of expression by functionaries. This man is being ordered to actually engage in expression: specifically, to recant and, by abjuring his own views on homosexuality, to say something which is presumably contrary to the dictates of his own conscience.

It’s no small step to move from ordering thou shalt not say to ordering thou shalt say. Let’s hope a real court gets ahold of this.

Indeed.

He hits the nail exactly on the head. It’s one thing for the court to say to Pastor Boissoin: “you can’t say that anymore.” That would be bad enough, seeing as how it is Censorship of expression that does not appear to meet the necessary — and sole legal — criteria for the due limitation of expression: incitement to violence. But actually forcing Pastor Boissoin to speak something which is not a viewpoint he holds for himself is quite another thing, and then much more serious.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Stephen Boissoin himself writes in with a comment — and perhaps even a clarification — concerning the letter by him which was cited in this article.

Just so people are aware, that letter was not just some baseless anti-homosexual rant. The newspaper gave it the title and it was published in the middle of the heated gay marriage, hate crimes bill, gay school books being added to the public school curriculum yadayadayada debates all across Canada. Had the gay activist not pushed for so much and destroyed so many or my liberties, that leter would not have been necessary.

In my own Province, the gay group Alberta — PFLAG had received funds from the AHRC, the same group of thugs that prosecuted me, to promote their very biased agenda to young people that homosexuality was “normal, necessary, acceptable and productive and has been for thousands of years.” To top it off, a pro-gay teacher in my city, same guy who filed the complaint against me, was inviting a gay minister to come into the public school to teach what he called “the pro-homosexual interpretation of the Bible.” He refused to invite a minister that held the traditional view so as to ensure his students had a balanced presentation.

Enough was enough….that letter was written to open the Pandora’s Box. To get people thinking and asking questions about the present imbalance of ‘gay rights’ which are agressively hindering the rights of others.

That letter, though the cause of my present persecution, has done what it was designed to do and I thank God that I had the opportunity to stand for truth and do my part. Had [Darren Lund] not filed that complaint, the letter and my views would have been contained to my Central Alberta community and the debate would have most likely ended in 2002. Instead, the world has access to my letter and I have been provided with a global pulpit for six years going.

Blessings,
Stephen Boissoin

One could not, I think, ask for a better reason to speak out than Pastor Boissoin’s closing paragraph. The issue of homosexuality is a complex one, involving moral theology and natural law as well as many other considerations, and certainly the present progressive tendency to rush in “with guns blazing” to make homosexuality “mainstream” is very concerning. People should have a right to speak out about the issue from every angle, including the moral angle, and in defence of what could be called traditional sexual norms. As Chesterton noted, “progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative”, and progress for its own sake has in all ages of history been ruinous to the societies that have sought after it.

We, as Canadians, should have the right to have heady, long-winded, and powerful debates about matters which affect the fabric of our society, which threaten to alter it in ways that may be destructive to it. We should have had that debate about divorce. We should have had that debate about abortion, common-law partnerships, and a whole host of other things which have chipped away, little by little, and the centrality of the family in stable society. We need to have that debate about homosexuality, if only to avoid repeating past mistakes. When people are silenced, the opportunities for such debates shut down.

But silencing someone only works if a) you kill him or b) he agrees to be silenced. Pace what Ezra Levant noted previously, the one who speaks out anyway, in spite of being ordered to shut up, is something of a dashing rogue…and, as Pastor Boissoin notes above, it is precisely because he was initially silenced that he elected to speak out even louder, spreading his side of the debate much farther than it probably would have gone had events transpired even slightly differently.

It’s things like this which will, in due time, be the end of the human rights commissions — or, at least, the end of the role of HRCs as an office of censorship, both nationally and provincially. More and more, Canadians are beginning to wake up and realize that regardless of what the government says, human beings possess natural human rights that exceed those mere things which governments privelege citizens to do. These rights can’t be taken away by anyone short of God Himself.

So why not speak out? Why not act out? Like the Poles in the 1980s, the moral authority is not possessed by those who would demand order, censorship, and obedience to government stipulations and obscure tribunals. The moral authority belongs to the people who will not give up those rights which are theirs regardless of the government’s opinion. Let us not give that up.

Update: Welcome, Sleepy Old Bear readers, and thanks for the kudos, Stillman! I like that term of yours…”pansexual”. Mind if I borrow it occasionally for future use?

Meet the Update: Welcome, Steynians!

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.

And this homosexual activist group, in denouncing the Alberta Human Rights Commission’s unjust ruling against Christian pastor Stephen Boissoin, reflects that idea better than many of us freespeechers have in the past.

On several occasions, I’ve pointed out that the Alberta government’s persecution of a Christian pastor for writing an anti-gay letter to the editor was not supported by EGALE, Canada’s leading gay rights lobby. As former executive director, Gilles Marchildon wrote when the case was still winding its way through the HRC. An excerpt:

While it is difficult to support Boissoin’s right to spew his misguided and vitriolic thoughts, support his right, we must.

If Boissoin was no longer able to share his views, then who might be next in also having their freedom of expression limited. Traditionally, the LGBT community’s freedom has been repressed by society and its laws.

Plus, it is far better that Boissoin expose his views than have them pushed underground. Under the glaring light of public scrutiny, his ideas will most likely wither and die.

In fact, his words may serve to increase public education. By more clearly seeing the ugly face of bigotry and prejudice, the need for teaching tolerance in schools becomes obvious.

I’m impressed with that. It’s a call to civic responsibility. Marchildon doesn’t abide Rev. Boissoin’s comments one bit. But instead of asking the nanny state to protect him, instead of outsourcing his civic duties to some HRC, Marchildon wants to engage in a public debate, and use it as a teaching moment. And, as the title of his article, “Freedom for all means freedom for each” shows, Marchildon knows that if an “offensive” Christian activist is censored today, an offensive gay rights activist can be censored tomorrow.

The HRCs in Canada are basically the put-into-practice version of the anonymous “they” in the old saying that begins “First they came for…” And it’s entirely true that an organ of the state such as a human rights commission in Canada can and will, in due time, turn on those it purports to protect. Already, these supposed defenders of human rights are trampling on human rights, by assailing the freedom of expression of those who put forth opinions that some consider distasteful. But in due course, might those same commissions decide to set aside another right in pursuit of granting, to yet another offended party, some undue form of redress?

As much as I realize that Vox Day is being facetious, I feel that I should point out that it’s highly unlikely that Richard Dawkins would ever be hauled before a human rights commission in Canada. Not because he is a foreign national — I’ve no doubt that the commission wouldn’t hesitate to prosecute a case against someone simply because they aren’t a Canadian citizen (I’m half-tempted to file a complaint against Dick Cheney to test this theory) if in fact it fit their agenda — but because, well, it wouldn’t fit their agenda to go after a noted scholar of atheism, especially on behalf of disaffected Christians.

I wonder how long it will be before someone in Canuckistan reports Richard Dawkins to one of these human rights commissions; he has almost surely made far more disparaging remarks about Jews, Christians, and Muslims than Stephen Boissoin ever made about homosexuals or Mark Steyn ever made about Muslims. The whole thing is appalling to anyone who supports human freedom, of course, but it would be extremely ironic to see Dawkins forced to publicly apologize “for his views on Judaism” and refrain from disparaging the religious faithful by a godless secular organization. Perhaps then he might see that connection between atheism and totalitarianism that he just hasn’t been able to locate yet.

The Jewish angle seems more workable, but I still doubt the prospects of succcess; I honestly can’t see such a radical, left-wing organ of the Canadian state as the CHRC (or any provincial HRC, come to think of it) going after a modern champion of secular thought.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I alluded, yesterday, to the possibility that a conviction of Maclean’s by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal could have sweeping, national implications — despite the fact that in theory, HRCs don’t recognize or rely on precedent, and despite the fact that the BCHRT has no jurisdiction outside of British Columbia.

Ezra Levant today gives an example of a ruling handed down by the Alberta Human Rights Commission that demonstrates what that effect could possibly look like. It’s…damning, really, as it demonstrates that an HRC has appointed to itself the power to, in effect, demand that a person renounce his beliefs (because let us be honest: if one is not free to articulate one’s beliefs, is one really free to hold them in the first place?).

A Christian pastor [Stephen Boissoin]has been given a lifetime ban against uttering anything “disparaging” about gays. Not against anything “hateful”, let alone something legally defined as “hate speech”. Just anything negative.

So a pastor cannot give a sermon.

[Rather,] he must give a false sermon; he is positively ordered to renounce his deeply held religious beliefs, and apologize to his tormentor for having those views.

And then that pastor is ordered to declare to his entire city that he has renounced his religious views, even though he has not.

That’s Alberta’s human rights commission. That’s the group where 15 bureaucrats are busily beavering away against me, because I published some Danish cartoons two years ago.

That’s the same “law” under which Maclean’s and Mark Steyn are charged.

I got into an argument once in which I made a crack about American ignorance of all things Canadian (the specific assertion I was responding to was my opponent’s implication that all of Canada experienced a two-month (8 week) stretch of the year in which the Sun did not rise). My opponent responded that I should be careful about making such cracks, in case the Yanks ever decided to invade hapless Canada.

I joked to him that he was presuming too much; specifically, I said, he presumed that I would view American invasion as a bad thing.

Would I? Especially in light of these rulings, I have to ask: would I?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!