A gay activist who gets it

Richard Warman, Canada's most prolific human rights complainer and all-around censor, is a member of EGALE, Canada's prominent gay advocacy group.

Other gay activists have also resorted to human rights commissions to silence critics of homosexuality -- including dispatching HRCs to bully Catholic newspapers and even a Catholic bishop. It's fair to say that HRC's no longer consider freedom of religion to include Catholicism. That's why I hate even calling them "human rights" commissions.

So I was surprised and delighted to come across this article by EGALE's executive director, Gilles Marchildon, in which he came out swinging against using human rights commissions to bully anti-gay activists. Marchildon even mentioned the shameful Lund v. Boissoin case that ruled that freedom of religion and speech is subordinate to the imaginary right not to be offended (see paragraph 357). 

Here are a few excerpts from Marchildon's letter:

It can be challenging to hear an opposite point of view. When that opinion is vehement and hurtful, it’s even more challenging to defend the right of that opinion to be expressed...

Boissoin called [gay] people “perverse, self-centered and morally deprived,” and said that “where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.”

The Pastor condemned the “horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality” as well as the “psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.”

He went on to say that “war has been declared,” calling on readers to “take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness.” (Click on this short-cut to see the full letter: http://tinyurl.com/dzsg6.)

:::

For reasonable people who believe in equality and safety for all, it is easy to condemn Boissoin’s hurtful and inflammatory language. Furthermore, the temptation is strong to want to silence such an angry diatribe which might find an audience of people willing to join his war against equality.

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.

Marchildon gets it. And so should anyone who claims to be an advocate for the downtrodden or the powerless. Historically, free speech -- scratch that -- offensive free speech has been the only tool available for powerless groups, precisely because they had nothing else: no power, no money and in many cases, no votes. From the anti-slavery movement to the suffragette movment to the civil rights movement, it was the force of ideas, spoken plainly and with the express purpose of offending the sensibilities of the status quo, that caused social change.

It's appalling that so many "official" spokesmen for groups that in the past have felt picked on -- I'm thinking of Official Jews, Official Feminists, Official Gays, etc. -- are now using the very tools of oppression and censorship they once chafed against. There is a libertarian streak to many gay activists; I think of martyrs Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. Their philosophy of persuasion and freedom is much more sympathetic than the abusive, butch politics of censorship and prosecution that Richard Warman and Darren Lund express.

When it comes to winning over public opinion to the cause of gay rights, for every person Marchildon persuades, Warman and Lund alienate ten others.

(h/t Rob Breakenridge)