5 Feet of Fury

Rex Murphy keeps banging anti-HRC drum

These commissions have stealthily migrated from their original and defined mandate to prevent discrimination in housing or employment, from deeds of discrimination, to an activist and capricious role of monitoring speech or thought. Under the hopelessly elastic and malleable rubric of ‘any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt’ they investigate and rule on everything from bishops to magazine editors, from genital surgery to hand-washing protocols at McDonald’s.

“A single complaint triggers their attention and zeal. Their procedures conform to a pattern known only to them. They leave those complained against to endure the process entirely on their own resources, while those who lay a complaint are nursed with all the resources of the state. Their writ runs from letters to the editor to the furthest reaches of the Internet…”