Tag Archives: Canada

News

Alberta judge rules that it is legal to disagree with homosexuality

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Political map of Canada
Political map of Canada

Good news in Alberta.

Excerpt:

Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Paul Jeffrey has dismissed a Crown appeal of a decision from a lower court that acquitted Bill Whatcott of trespassing charges for distributing “Truth about homosexuality” pamphlets at the University of Calgary in 2008.

On Friday, March 30, Jeffrey upheld the November 2011 ruling by provincial court Judge John D. Bascom that stated the University of Calgary infringed on Whatcott’s Charter rights to freedom of expression when campus security arrested and detained him for distributing a pamphlet that addressed the “harmful consequences” of homosexuality.

The university had argued that the Charter only applied to “government actors and government actions,” not to the university itself since it was a private entity.

Bascom ruled, however, that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to the University of Calgary since “the University is not a Charter free zone,” in that it carried out “specific” governmental work by providing post-secondary education to the public in Alberta, making its actions subject to scrutiny under the Charter.

“Mr. Whatcott entered the university property with a purpose to distribute his literature to students, staff and public,” said the judge, adding, “His activity was peaceful and presented no harm to the university structures or those who frequented the campus. … Although Mr. Whatcott’s pamphlet is not scholarly, freedom of speech is not limited to academic works.”

Bascom concluded that “the means used by campus security halted Mr. Whatcott’s distribution of these flyers and violated his right of free expression.”

The judge also lifted the University’s ban against Whatcott that would have indefinitely prohibited him from setting foot on the campus again, stating that the ban was “arbitrary and unfair.”

Do you all remember that the University of Calgary is one of the ones that harassed pro-lifers with armed policemen? That’s still better than Carleton University, which actually had pro-lifers arrested by armed policemen.

This Alberta ruling dovetails nicely with a 2010 ruling from the province of Saskatchewan:

In 2010 Whatcott won an appeal in Saskatchewan when Justice Darla Hunter of Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal overturned a 2006 Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal ruling that found him guilty of violating the province’s human rights code by publicly criticizing homosexuality through a series of flyers he distributed in Saskatoon and Regina in 2001 and 2002.

The tribunal had ordered Whatcott to pay $17,500 and imposed a “lifetime” ban on his freedom to publicly criticize homosexuality.

In her decision Justice Hunter ruled that Whatcott did not violate section 14(1)(b) of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code by distributing flyers to oppose the teaching of homosexuality in Saskatoon’s public schools.

“It is acceptable, in a democracy, for individuals to comment on the morality of another’s behaviour. … Anything that limits debate on the morality of behaviour is an intrusion on the right to freedom of expression,” Justice Hunter had remarked.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are the two most conservative provinces in Canada. Let’s hope that other provinces move in the same direction.

News

Australian apologist makes the case against gay marriage proposal

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The Labor Party of Australia is trying to push for gay marriage, so Matthew Hamilton of Aristophrenium blog sent them an argument against it.

Excerpt:

Man-woman marriage is an important social good. As a group, as a rule, and by nature, marriages produce children. The public purpose of marriage, therefore, associates the children produced from it to their father and likewise associates the father to their mother. This cohesiveness serves to foster the best environment within which to raise children2, over and above all other forms of family combinations, and is in this real sense, a unique arrangement to be promoted.

By contrast, same-sex unions, as a group, as a rule, and by nature, cannot produce children without the involvement of a third party. Homosexual unions are socially infertile; while some homosexual partnerships do involve children from previous relationships or conceived through IVF, these arrangements are intentionally designed to deny children the nurture of one or both of their biological parents. While two homosexuals can be loving parents, it defies common sense that a homosexual man can be a good “mother” to a child, and likewise that a homosexual woman can be a good “father” to a child. Author and lawyer Dawn Stefanowicz, writing of her experience growing up with a gay father, remarked: “What makes it so hard for a girl to grow up with a gay father is that she never gets to see him loving, honoring and protecting the women in his life3.”

I think it’s important to make those two points. Boys need to have a father as a role model and girls need to have a mother as a role model. And the children also need to see, up close, how men and women get along in a loving relationship – one that is not built on lust, but on commitment. By the time children grow, their parents are already into middle-age, usually, and the affection is more likely to be based on self-sacrifice and commitment. It’s important for children to have that example of women caring for and listening to their husbands and husbands providing for and protecting their wives.

Hamilton also writes about the threat to religious liberty posed by gay activists:

Where same-sex marriage is legalised (and even in some instances where it is not yet legal), ordinary citizens, business owners, religious believers and not-for-profit organisations will have their religious liberties and values and freedom of speech curtailed:

  • In Jan 2011, hotel owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull from Cornwall, UK, were ordered to pay $6000 in damages to a homosexual couple who sued them for declining to offer a room as it violated their hotel policy to only make board available to married couples4
  • In Illinois, Washington DC and Massachusetts, US, Catholic bishops voluntarily closed the Church’s adoption and foster-care organisations rather than comply with new non- discrimination laws following the legalising of same-sex marriage in those states which would have forced them to place children with same-sex couples5
  • Massachusetts, US, 2005, father David Parker was arrested after talking with his son’s school about opting his son out of mandatory pro-homosexuality teaching6. (Charges were later dropped.)
  • New Mexico, US, 2008, a Christian photographer was sued by a lesbian couple after refusing to shoot a gay wedding7
  • Canada, 2008, evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson was fined $5000 and banned from expressing his biblical understanding of homosexuality8
  • UK, Church of England lawyers state that legalising same-sex marriage in England will effectively force churches to comply9
  • UK, housing manager Adrian Smith was demoted10 after posting a criticism of the UK’s new gay rights law on his personal Facebook page, on his own time
  • Derbyshire, UK, Christians Mr and Mrs Johns denied the right to be foster parents11 after refusing to teach children in their care that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle

And recently in Canada, some provinces have introduced gay-activist propaganda into the schools, as well as making it illegal for homeschooling parents to tell their children that there is anything wrong morally with homosexuality.

Matt makes a pretty good case. I know that both the UK and Australia are both facing gay marriage bills right now. It’s always a good idea for pro-marriage, pro-family conservatives to be able to make a secular case against gay marriage. Here’s my case against same-sex marriage.

Commentary

Do gun registries solve crimes? Learning from the Canadian experience

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John Lott explains in the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

The D.C. Council will soon vote on a new law that would eliminate several obstacles for gun buyers — a five-hour training course, ballistics testing, a vision test, and a ban on certain types of ammunition. But they will leave unchanged the registration requirement for gun owners. D.C. could learn a lot from Canada’s decision to finally rescind its gun registry in February.

Beginning in 1998, Canadians spent a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a registry for long guns — in the U.S., the same amount per gun owner would come to $67 billion. For all that money, the registry was never credited with solving a single murder. Instead, it became an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from traditional policing activities.

Gun control advocates have long claimed that registration is a safety issue. Their reasoning is straightforward: If a gun is left at a crime scene, and it was registered to the person who committed the crime, the registry will link it back to the criminal.

Unfortunately, it rarely works out this way. Criminals are seldom stupid enough to leave behind crime guns that are registered to themselves.

From 2003 to 2009, there were 4,257 homicides in Canada, 1,314 of which were committed with firearms. Data provided last fall by the Library of Parliament reveal that murder weapons were recovered in fewer than one-third of the homicides with firearms. About three-quarters of the identified weapons were unregistered. Of the weapons that were registered, about half were registered to someone other than the person accused of the homicide.

In only 62 cases — that is, nine per year, or about 1 percent of all homicides in Canada — was the gun registered to the accused. Even in these, the registry does not appear to have played an important role in finding the killer. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police have not yet provided a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a case.

Note that the data provided above cover all guns, including handguns. It isn’t just the long-gun registry — there is also no evidence that Canada’s handgun registry, started in 1934, has ever been important in solving a single homicide.

In parts of the United States where registration is required, the results have been no different. Neither Hawaii, D.C., nor Chicago can point to any crimes that have been solved using registration records.

Nor is there any evidence that registration has reduced homicides. Research published last year by McMaster University professor Caillin Langmann in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence confirmed what other academic studies have found: “This study failed to demonstrate a beneficial association between legislation and firearm homicide rates between 1974 and 2008.” There is not a single refereed academic study by criminologists or economists that has found a significant benefit. A recent Angus Reid poll indicates that Canadians understand this, with only 13 percent believing that the registry has been successful.

The problem isn’t just that the $2.7 billion spent on registration over 17 years hasn’t solved any crimes. It is that the money could have been used to put more police on the street or pay for more health care or cut taxes.

We have been trying all kinds of things since Obama was elected that were already tried in other countries. Green energy, stimulus spending, green jobs programs, socialized medicine, printing money to pay off record deficits, and so on. We need to start learning from the experiences of other countries. If something hasn’t worked in another country, then we shouldn’t be trying it here. We should do what has been known to work. Gun registries don’t solve crimes.