Human Rights Violations In Canada?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bad Decisions, The WorldThose are some words you don’t usually see together, but that’s what will happen if a man who publicly condemned homosexuality is forced to pay a fine and apologize for his comments.
From In The Agora:
Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, right? Here’s one I fully agree with the Worldnetdaily on. A Canadian minister named Stephen Boissoin has been brought up on charges before the Human Rights Commission of Alberta, his home province, because he submitted a letter to a newspaper condemning homosexuality. A professor from the University of Calgary, Darrell Lund, filed the charges and is demanding that Boissoin be fined (he could be fined as much as $7000) and be forced to apologize. This is nothing short of outrageous.Boissoin is wrong, dead wrong, in his opinions about homosexuals. But that is irrelevant. The notion that having someone else disapprove of you or think you are immoral violates your human rights is patently absurd. The only one whose human rights have been violated in this situation is Mr. Boissoin, who has a right to speak his mind and state his position regardless of how offensive it might be to me or anyone else. The proper response to offensive speech is not to use the power of government to punish that speech, but to use one’s own voice to condemn him and prove him wrong.
I agree that Boissoin’s comments are “dead wrong”, but the author of this post is right. You either support free speech or you don’t. We can’t distinguish between the acceptable and the unacceptable without hurting that right. That’s why we have the ACLU, who defend both sides of the ideological spectrum. You may not agree with those they defend, but that’s the beauty and the beast of freedom of speech.
Let’s hope Canada lives up to that standard and the courts dismiss this lawsuit.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 12th, 2005 at 10:22 am
I just love the preamble that some people feel necessary to include when defending the right to think and speak: “So and so, is wrong, dead wrong, but…” — this just goes to show the entrenched power of the PC nazis intellegesia in this country. It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where someone thinks George & Jerry are homosexuals — after being completely revulsed by the notion and going out of their way to quash the “homo” rumor they say….”not that anything is wrong with that.”
Oh and by the way, I too think this guy was wrong, dead wrong, a complete mental midget, a bunion on the ass of humanity which should be summarily executed for no other reason but to clean the gene pool….wooo, safe.
September 12th, 2005 at 3:42 pm
I think qualifying support is understandable. Trust me, given my recent questioning of using the crescent symbol in a 9/11 memorial, a little bit more qualifying would have saved me quite a bit of grief over on another blog.
July 14th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
I have realized that my rights have been violated by the R.C.M.P and the crown. I have tried many avenues of getting the situation looked in to by many parties only to be road blocked from all directions. I was wondering if the truth is in fact that you can’t fight city hall, even if they are wrong. These incidents have left me mentally scared and spiteful toward all Canadians due to lack of unity combating this injustice. Many of the incidents occured during my youth, and the Crown went even as far as to request I take mind altering drugs. I realize why they didn’t like who I was, this must be some kind of violation in itself. Those drugs made me accept that the person I was was not wanted. I attempted suicide with those very drugs and to my dismay it failed but I believe that a new and much more powerful person was created due to the abuse of the drug. I still do not know what steps an individual could take to tackle this great Imperial made travesty. Who defends those who cannot defend themselves from them.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:59 am
The greatest paradox is found in those who corrupt that which they desire to promote, that is the greatest injustices are done in the name of justice, the greatest unhealths are done in the name of health, the greatest non-peace in the name of peace, and the great inequitities in the name of equality.
We should be pursuing equitable treatment of people, not merely equal treatment of people, for we are not all equal, and we do give special rights to some people on the basis of compassion….
However, history will show that what we say we do and what we do are two different things….for even truth can lie….but that is another topic…
Caesar J. B. Squitti