National Post (National Edition)
Just how ‘free’ is our free country?
Iread a plaintive piece the other day by John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the organization that takes on some of the most unpopular causes around and represents some of the sometimes eccentric individuals who otherwise would be steamrollered by the state.
Carpay was reflecting on how what he calls the “leaveme-alone, respect-my-privacy” libertarianism of the early gay rights movement of the 1960s has morphed into a movement to compel, often through state power, universal approval of homosexuality and, more recently, gender fluidity and the transgendered.
The column was published (on a new, right-ofcentre online paper called Post Millennial) shortly after several gay organizations in Toronto, led by Pride Toronto, announced they wanted the Toronto police to withdraw its application to march in this summer’s Pride Parade, citing how the community has been shaken by the murders of six men, the work of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur.
The groups’ joint statement also condemned the “insufficient” investigations into the men’s disappearances from the gay village and the fact that though “many of us felt and voiced our concerns, we were dismissed.”
The jury is still out on much of that, actually, which is why there’s going to be an independent review of the police work on the string of disappearances (the first probe was in 2012-13, the second last year) and an internal review, which was set in motion when the officer in charge, the magnificent Det.Sgt. Hank Idsinga, learned of something that may not have been properly handled and did exactly the right thing by quickly reporting it.
And the notion that the community knew a serial killer was allegedly at work and was ignored is mostly revisionist history.
A comprehensive search of blogs, mainstream press, social media and gay community media shows that but for the headline over one blog post, in 2013, the alarm wasn’t publicly raised or reported until last summer.
That doesn’t preclude individuals having gone to police earlier, of course, and it doesn’t preclude investigative screw-ups, but it’s nonsense to suggest that the community was practically quivering with alarm and the force blithely ignored it.
What’s relevant to Carpay’s piece is that where once it seemed that all the gay community wanted was equality — freedom from persecution, if you like, and the ability not to be fired from a job, not to be refused service, not to get an apartment, etc. because of sexuality — now those who don’t embrace the full spectrum of gay and transgendered life are often silenced, usually through government instrument or policy. And the community that once wanted only to be included is sometimes less than inclusive itself.
Carpay gave a number of examples: the Chilliwack, B.C., school trustee, Barry Neufeld, who is being taken to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal by a union for his allegedly homophobic and transphobic statements (most notoriously, he said that teaching children that gender is fluid is akin to child abuse); the Toronto printer, Scott Brockie, who refused to do a job for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives though he’d served individual gay customers, and was in 2004 ordered to do the print job and pay the Archives $5,000 and the Ontario Human Rights Commission (as it then was) $15,000; and the Edmonton couple who were approved as adoptive parents by Catholic Social Services and then rejected last year by the Alberta government (Child and Family Services) who were concerned their Evangelical Christian beliefs would render them unable to “help” a child with “sexual identity issues.”
As Carpay wrote, “In a free country, you can argue that gay sex is sinful, or that gay sex is normal, natural and good.
“But a society can no longer be called free once the state attaches penalties, or withholds benefits, for speaking out one’s moral or philosophical beliefs, or for practising them peacefully with others in voluntary communities of like-minded citizens.”
He noted that 20 years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Alberta to add “sexual orientation” to its human rights legislation. He remembers, as do I, the benign spin that was put on the change.
This was in the famous case called Vriend vs. Alberta, Vriend being Delwin Vriend, who was fired by the private Christian school then known as King’s College (now King’s University) despite a glowing record and promotions, simply because he was gay, and who couldn’t even bring a human rights complaint because sexual orientation wasn’t one of the protected grounds.
To mark this important anniversary, the University of Alberta had an event on March 19 about the Vriend case.
But it wasn’t held, as Carpay said, to discuss or analyze the decision, or examine its many repercussions, not all as benign as predicted, “but to celebrate it.”
Every single panellist was a former Vriend lawyer, activist or friendly face.
“This being a Canadian university in 2018,” Carpay wrote, “the thought of inviting speakers with opposing views did not cross anyone’s mind.”