Rev. Stephen Boissoin In Court Challenging "Hate Speech" Conviction

The report below is from 16th. I have been waiting for a verdict before I commented on it but there has been a deathly silence ever since. Courts do proceed at a very leisurely pace so who knows when we will hear more? Anyway, we are likely to end up seeing here another defeat for the Canadian speech police. They seem to have cracked every time that they have been forcefully challenged so far. On this occasion they are not even defending themselves!

The Court of the Queen's Bench is a fairly senior court in the Canadian system so all the protections of due process that are so spectacularly absent in the "Human Rights" tribunals will be available there.

"Last year Alberta pastor Stephen Boissoin was ordered by the Alberta Human Rights Commission to desist from expressing his views on homosexuality in any sort of public forum, and to pay complainant and homosexual activist Dr. Darren Lund $7,000 in damages.

Today, however, he is in Alberta Court of the Queen's Bench, appealing the conviction of hate speech that resulted in the above penalties. That conviction was based upon a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate, in which Boissoin expressed his opinion that homosexuality is immoral and dangerous, and called into question new gay-rights curricula permeating the province's educational system.

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) allied attorney Gerald Chipeur has submitted a full legal brief in the precedent-setting appeal. In that appeal Chipeur is seeking a full dismissal of the complaint and conviction on behalf of Boissoin, and the granting of costs incurred by Boissoin in his defense as well as repayment of the indemnity he paid to Lund.

"People of faith should not be fined or jailed for expressing their political or religious beliefs," said Chipeur in an ADF press release. "The ability to express one's conscience is a fundamental human right protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This pastor cannot be muzzled simply because someone else does not share his viewpoint, and a recent decision from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in a national case confirms this."

On Sept. 2, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) ruled in a separate case that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, Canada's human rights legislation against hate messages, unreasonably limits the Charter right to freedom of expression. Member Athanasios D. Hadjis issued the ruling in the case of Richard Warman and the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) against Marc Lemire, operator of the website FreedomSite.org, who was the subject of a complaint brought by serial complainant and former CHRC employee Richard Warman in November 2003.

The Calgary Herald reports that the Alberta Human Rights Commission, which sanctioned and fined Mr. Boissoin, has declined to participate in the Court of Queen's Bench trial at which the constitutionality of its ruling will be debated, and that both the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Constitution Foundation will appear as interveners on Boissoin's behalf.

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