The "human right" to practice S&M

I am not a sufficiently creative writer to dream up the kind of insanity that Canada's human rights commissions call "a day at the office."

Here's news -- in the Toronto Star, from a Reuters dispatch, no less -- of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal agreeing to hear a case about a man's "human right" to practise "bondage, discipline, submission, sadism and masochism".

The news story is very brief -- thank goodness -- so we're spared most of the details. Besides being a pain afficionado, Peter Hayes, the complainant, says he's a pagan. The story neglects to tell us whether his complaint is rooted in that quirk, too.

Look, I don't care what Hayes does with consenting adults in the privacy of his own home. Frankly, I doubt it has much bearing on whether he can be a chauffeur driver. But that's something for him to take up with the taxi commission. That the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is taking this case on -- on the taxpayers' dime -- merely shows how few real human rights cases there are, and that these tribunals, merely to stay in business and keep their burgeoning bureaucracies busy, must resort to stranger and stranger cases just to fill their days.

It's not just the thought crimes provisions of the HRCs that have to go -- their other "work" is a farce, too.

h/t EG