Friday, June 27, 2008

Unbelievable: Alberta "human rights" official endorses Maoist thought policing

Thanks to the Stephen Boissoin case, an American Christian youth worker, who gives seminars promoting sexual abstinence, is worried if some of his portrayals of homosexuality as a sin is going to land him in trouble with the law when he comes to speak at an Edmonton church. Boissoin recounts the story at Free Dominion.

So the American phones up the Alberta Human Rights Commission. And some bureaucrat effectively tells him that he should get participants to sign consent forms. But even then, if one of his audience then goes public with "homophobic" views, say at school, then a teacher could lay a complaint against the youth minister.

Basically, a kid in school doesn't have a right to his opinion. If he questions homosexuality, the teacher can brow beat him until he gives up the name of a preacher, or whomever, who dared to communicate traditional Judeo-Christian views on homosexuality. The preacher can then be hauled in front of a "human rights" tribunal and, like Boissoin, banned from making "disparaging" comments about homosexuality and forced to make a public "apology"

What's more, the American teacher is advised to run his course by the police, to check for "hate crimes".

This is pure Maoism. In Canada, today. Fire. Them. All.

HT: Four Horses

4 comments:

zazie said...

the article "too bloody angry to post" has been translated, along with Boissoin's letter, and is now on www/scriptoblog.com
I hope you will approve of the translation....and won't mind the prudent beginning of their article: we have to be very careful, because of "la HALDE" (Haute Autorité de Lutte contre la Discrimination et l'Exclusion" ; those people have already gone so far as having mayors condemned by our kangaroo court for disapproving an "art (sic!) exhibition" showing sexual activities "live" (sic!), or excrements "produced by the artist"......They manage to frighten local politicians, and they ruin bloggers or newspaper through heavy fines, fines to be paid either to the State or to the "artist"....
I hope the translator was right when he supposed you belong to the Jewish religion : he thought so because of the way at one moment you refer to "Christians" as if they were strangers to you...If he was wrong, and if it bothers you, let them know!

truepeers said...

Thanks Zazie for promoting my post and our blog.

My French is not good enough to really judge the translation; I'm sure it's fine though.

Your la HALDE sounds likes another outrage, imperious stupidity, and so un-French.

As for my comment about Christianity being "patriarchal". That could get us into a long discussion, one in which I have no definite understanding. For me, "patriarchal" best refers to a certain way of representing the sacred and of understanding human capacity for sacrificial violence. Basically, I see patriarchal religion as having been a way out of irrational sacrificial violence, the kind of thing I accused Lori Andreachuck of.

My sense is that Christianity and Judaism are the quintessential patriarchal religions, whatever the role of Mary in Christianity. Patriarchy is first of all an attitude towards (God) the father, and his worldly reality, one that need not exclude women.

I was raised by secular parents, a Jewish mother and (post)Christian father. And I guess I see myself as being very much a product of both Jewish and Christian world views though I am not myself a practitioner of the ritual aspects of religion.

By the way, for any other people reading this, we are referring to this this translation of an earlier post here on Boissoin.

Anonymous said...

"This is pure Maoism."

It's the Canadian Values Canadian politicians have campaigned upon and the Canadian People have voted in favor of which have been made into Canadian Law and enforced by Canadian bureaucracies.

" Fire. Them. All. "

Won't happen. Get used to the (somewhat) new Canada.

truepeers said...

Anon.

Your cynical detachment is rather more Canadian.

When have Canadians ever voted to force people to renounce their core moral and ethical beliefs in phony public apologies? When have we ever voted to ban people from any merely "disparaging" discussion of one or another side of central ethical concerns?

Now I grant you that there has been much acquiescence to varieties of imperialistic liberalism/ cultural relativism in Canada; but now that the implications of this are being revealed ever more clearly, how do we know people won't begin to change their political assumptions? I see signs of change all the time.

In any case, it is hardly virtuous to suggest people get used to it. History is open-ended; the ability fully to appreciate this is what ultimately distinguishes the people of good faith who will have a hand in renewing the road from past to future from those who won't do much more than growl.

Nothing lasts forever, nothing.