5 Feet of Fury

Be honest: when you read “1984” in high school…

did you ever picture the bad guys as leftists…?

Even political parties are not immune from censorship. Ron Gray, president of the federal Christian Heritage Party of Canada, has been called before a commission to account for views his party has maintained on homosexuality for the last 20 years.

The commissions have also been at work in censoring religious institutions. The conservative Catholic magazine Catholic [Insight] and its editor, Father Alphonse de Valk, have been denounced to the commission for publishing official Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality.

These cases are still pending, but their outcome is predictable. Unlike in a court of law, there is no presumption of innocence for the defendant, and the commissions have returned a verdict of guilty in virtually every hate speech case they have ever heard.

(…)

As a Christian minister I find this encroaching state censorship troubling, because I and many other ministers hold views of morality that are very much in line with historic Christianity but are not “politically correct.” Will I get a registered letter some day informing me that my sermon on homosexuality has offended someone and they have denounced me to the Human Rights Commission? Or will I be summoned because an Islamist or Hindu or secularist was offended that I publicly taught that Jesus Christ is the only way to God? (Far-fetched? It’s already happened in Australia).

A National Post editorial in January 1999 noted that Canada’s hate-speech legislation is “potentially sinister;” “(its) proposed new provisions could be put to authoritarian and illiberal purposes.” Folks, that day has now arrived.