“If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?”
The question was not rhetorical. Nor was it theoretical. Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Basilian priest and pro-life activist known throughout Canada for his orthodoxy, is currently being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) — a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it. The CHRC is using section 13 of Canada’s Human Rights Act to investigate the priest. This is a section under which no defendant has ever won once the allegation has gone to tribunal — the next stage of the process.
Most defendants end up paying thousands of dollars in fines and compensation. This is in addition to various court costs. Moreover, defendants are responsible for their own legal defense. In contrast, the commission provides free legal assistance to the complainant.
What was Father de Valk’s alleged ‘hate act’?
Father defended the Church’s teaching on marriage during Canada’s same-sex ‘marriage’ debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages – many of who are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman.
The response from Mark van Dusen, a media consultant and spokesperson for CHRC, shocked me. I have interviewed van Dusen in the past and he has always struck me as an honest person willing to field tough questions on behalf of the commission. If he feels an accusation against the commission is hogwash, he states so plainly. If he feels the CHRC and its personnel are being unfairly tainted, he states so boldly.
Yet van Dusen did not dismiss the question out-of-hand as I thought he would. “We investigate complaints, Mr. Vere,” he said, “we don’t set public policy or moral standards. We investigate complaints based on the circumstances and the details outlined in the complaint. And …if…upon investigation, deem that there is sufficient evidence, then we may forward the complaint to the tribunal, but the hate is defined in the Human Rights Act under section 13-1.”
In other words, individual Jews, Muslims, Catholics and other Christians who, for reasons of conscience, hold to their faith’s traditional teaching concerning marriage, could very well be guilty of promoting hate in Canada. The same is true of any faith community in Canada that does not embrace this modern redefinition of one of the world’s oldest institutions — a redefinition that even the highly-secularist France rejects.
“Our job is to look at it, compare it to the act, to accumulated case law, tribunal and court decisions that have reflected on hate and decide whether to advance the complaint, dismiss it or whether there is room for a settlement between parties,” van Dusen continued. The truth of the CHRC considering adherence to Catholicism or Islam a possible hate crime was made real by van Dusen’s implicit admission that the commission could dismiss the complaint against Fr. De Valk. Over six months have passed since the commission first notified Father of the complaint. There has been no hint of the commission dropping the complaint.
Father de Valk publishes Catholic Insight, a Canadian magazine that “bases itself on the Church’s teaching and applies it to various circumstances in our time.” He is being accused by a homosexual activist of promoting “extreme hatred and contempt” against homosexuals.
Yet following the example of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XV, Father has stated on several occasions that we must love homosexuals and treat them with the dignity due every human person. “The basic view of the Church is that homosexual acts are a sin, but we love the sinner,” Father told me during an interview. “Opposing same-sex marriage is not the same as rejecting homosexuals as persons.” This is the deeply-held belief of orthodox Christians that is now considered a possible hate act warranting state intervention. This is what happens when government agencies broadly define homophobia as opposition to any homosexual act.
Yet the complaint against Father de Valk is just one of several in recent years that has been pursued against Christians by Canada’s human rights commissions. In 2005, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal fined a Knights of Columbus council over $1,000 dollars for declining to rent their hall to a couple for a lesbian marriage ceremony.
Five years previous, the Ontario Human Rights Commission fined Protestant printer Scott Brockie $5,000 for declining to print homosexual-themed stationary. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined Hugh Owens thousands of dollars for quoting a couple of Bible verses in a letter to the local newspaper. And Mayor Diane Haskett in London, Ontario, was fined $10,000 plus interest for declining to proclaim a gay pride day.
Nor have Canada’s bishops been spared. Bishop Fred Henry, one of Canada’s most outspoken defenders of the sanctity of life and marriage, was brought before a human rights commission for upholding Catholic moral teaching. While the complaint was ultimately withdrawn — not by the commission, but by the individual who originally filed the complaint — Bishop Henry incurred thousands of dollars of legal costs.
Thus Bishop Henry sympathizes with Father de Valk, who the bishop praises as a model of Catholic orthodoxy and fidelity to Christian teaching. “The social climate right now is that we’re into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police,” His Excellency states.
Additionally, a message posted to a popular Catholic internet forum has reportedly made its way before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The alleged poster, who is an American writing from America, was commenting on an article written by Mark Steyn — a Canadian author who now lives in New Hampshire. The tribunal accepted this posting as evidence that Steyn promoted “hatred”. While the website is never mentioned by name in news reports – referred to only as “a Catholic website” — a source at the tribunal told me, off-the-record, that the website was Catholic Answers.
While the claim is unconfirmed as of this writing, the controversial Mark Steyn article, over which the British Columbia hearing is being held, was posted to the Catholic Answers message forum. Moreoever, popular Jewish-Canadian blogger Ezra Levant, who is blogging live from the hearing, and who is the subject of his own human rights commission complaint, published a description of the unnamed Catholic forum. Several details match, including the screen names of two participants to the Catholic Answers forum discussion of Steyn’s article.
Imagine that! Canada’s human rights tribunals are now attempting to prosecute a case against an American resident, based upon what an American citizen allegedly posted to a mainstream American Catholic website. What passes for mainstream Catholic discussion in America is now the basis for a hate complaint in Canada.
Moreover, Christians in America are not immune from what is happening to their co-religionists across the border. This past April, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ordered Elaine Huguenin, a self-employed Christian photographer, to pay a lesbian couple $6,600 for having declined to photograph their same-sex commitment ceremony. This fine and stress from the legal proceedings come at a time when Huguenin and her husband are expecting their first child.
The New Mexico commission ignored the fact that photography is a form of artistic expression. The state commission ignored the fact that the First Amendment protects individuals from compelled speech — that is, coercion from the state to give artistic expression that violates one’s most deeply held beliefs. The commission’s one-page ruling simply stated that Huguenin had “discriminated against [the lesbian complainant] because of sexual orientation.” As this New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruling shows, Americans are in grave danger of having their religious liberty ripped away from them by Canadian-style human rights commissions.
June 4th, 2008 at 2:48 am
It would appear that Canadian law is discriminating against people on the basis of their religious faith, or perhaps discriminating against God himself, who gave us the laws of nature and purpose of life.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:11 am
one can only hope that should the commission indeed convict and levy fine and punishment against this good priest for the crime of stating the truth, that the Catholic bishops will in their turn file a complaint alleging extreme hate and harm against all Catholics.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I would guess that Catholics are not a protected group in Canada.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:27 am
There is also no First Amendment (or First Amendment rights) in Canada.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:33 am
It is not that there are no First Amendment rights in Canada, it is that an activist judiciary has reinterpreted what forms of expression fall under that protection.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Time to bring the people who are gay activists before the tribunal. If one of them mocks religious life in a parade, if they are heard to utter the word breeder, if they ever denigrate a pro-life position they should be brought before the tribunal just as quick. In fact we should backlog the system with complaints. Any time someone blasphemes the name of God in public they should be brought up on hate charges. Of course I am kidding, we don;t really want to do that but if the person is a public figure absolutely!
June 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am
The days of freedom and equality have ended. The tyranny of relativism is upon us.
June 4th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Let’s see — the two “offended” groups who are using the HRCs to harrass and persecute Christians are 1. homosexualists who want to suppress any relgious prohibition against their activities 2. Muslims whose own tenets would severely punish the homosexualists.
Here we have the two of them joining forces to attack the Christians without whose influence open warfare would break out between them.
June 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
The only way we currently have to build precedent for the protection of our rights within the current climate is to seriously do exactly as Pmccrsp says: file hate crime complaints when those who wish to obliterate Catholic teaching denigrate us.
June 4th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
This is the beginning of the end folks. We as Christians will be persecuted again in our life time, history will repeat itself.
Those who glorify the sin of homosexuality will use our own ropes to hang us.
Who ever screms the loudest and tells the lie long enough will eventually get that to become the truth.
Get out there and vote in Novemeber.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
file hate crime complaints when those who wish to obliterate Catholic teaching denigrate us.
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
I’d also like to think that the Conservative parliament might have enough stones to pass laws to rein in the HRC. But the Canadian judiciary is even more imperial than the US’, and would likely find a pretext to strike down the laws.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
There is also no First Amendment (or First Amendment rights) in Canada.
Actually, in Canada’s Charter, it guarantees (or supposedly guarantees) under “Fundamental Freedoms” the following:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.
Yet the tyrannical HRC in Canada (and even in America) seem to be illiterate when it comes to realizing neither of these rights says “unless someone feels offended by what you say, think, or believe.”
The honest thing would be to do away with such charters, but that would be too obvious. So they attempt to harass us into silence.
I, as a practicing Catholic, will *NOT* go quietly.
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/#garantie
June 21st, 2008 at 6:45 pm
They totally trampled upon rights he should have. The pastor should have the right to his opinion.
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In Canada, advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any ‘identifiable group’ is an indictable offense under the Criminal Code of Canada with maximum terms of two to fourteen years. An ‘identifiable group’ is defined as ‘any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.’ It makes exceptions for cases of statements of truth, and subjects of public debate and religious doctrine. The landmark judicial decision on the constitutionality of this law was R. v. Keegstra (1990).
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So really, he wasn’t breaking the law. I could be wrong (or more accurately, Wikipedia could be wrong). That being said, it is a red herring to declare that this decision amounts to an attack against Christianity. Hate crime laws are an all-encompassing attack on freedom of speech. The same law could be used to prosecute hate speech against Christians.