Your Ward News: Harmful or hogwash?
There are half a dozen layspectators in court, all of them white, all of them senior citizens, all of them with their noses in the most recent edition of Your Ward News.
One gentleman had pulled the papers from his bag and distributed them outside the College St. courtroom before the judicial proceeding came to order on Wednesday: final submissions in the judge-only trial of James Sears and LeRoy St. Germaine, respectively editor-in-chief and publisher of the odious little rag, on charges of wilfully promoting hatred against women and Jews.
At this point in a trial which began in November, any courtroom observer who’s followed the case would have a firm grasp of the nonsense spewed by the defendants — the Holocaust denial, the world banking Jewish conspiracy, a reverence for Nazism, the portrayal of women — oh, pardon me, feminists — as “disgusting bitches,” “murderous whores,” “closet bull-dykes” and legitimate targets for sexual violence.
Endless anti-Semitism and misogyny.
The accused, who constantly smirk and chortle, have come across as cartoony figures, very similar to the caricatures that fill the pages of YWN.
Sadder, I think, are these apparent supporters of the defendants and, presumably, the publication they disgorge — mostly for free — to some 300,000 people in southwestern Ontario, primarily in Toronto’s west end. Households that, for the overwhelming most part, have no interest in receiving the amateurish tabloid and don’t want it dropped into their mailboxes. As, indeed, Canada Post has been banned by the federal government from delivering the toxic paper. And yet it has its adherents. From a letter-to-the-editor, in the current edition: “We love your little satirical publication here at our seniors’ apartment complex. One of the fellas distributes it to our flats and there are always copies in the lounge. I am in hysterics at some of the stuff and the cartoon photos, brilliant! It amazes me how people can screw themselves into the ceiling tiles over something meant to be humour … We thought one WWII veteran would get mad at the Hitler stuff, but surprisingly enough he said that when they landed at Juno Beach, if any of them knew what Trudeau Sr. was going to do to Canada a couple of decades later, they would have gotten right back on the landing craft.”
It’s impossible to know if any of the letters are legitimate. Certainly, YWN is chock full of hogwash. The defence has banged away at the satirical nature of the newspaper, not to be taken seriously.
But prosecuting a hate charge is difficult, securing a conviction even more so. Although, as Crown attorney Robin Flumerfelt reminded Wednesday, the law does not require proving intent to harm.
“While proof of actual harm is not required, Canadians and Canadian courts have made it clear that the law exists be- cause of the immense harm that this conduct can cause.”
Quantifiable harm from “clear and unequivocal hatred,” not just hurt feelings.
“It is not new-age political correctness.
“It is not a conspiracy to limit free speech.
“It is a law that recognizes that these types of hatred are the seeds of destruction.”
A hatred that asserts evolution has made cunning liars of women, that children would be better off raised by robots, that Jews were responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris and 9/11, women responsible for the mass killing along north Yonge St. last April when a man plowed a van into people on the sidewalk.
That advocates for the decriminalization of violence but, in the defence view of this case, doesn’t actually condone violence itself.
That sexual violence is inevi- table, so why don’t you just enjoy it.
That it’s not rape if the victim suffers “only” minimal vagina or anal damage.
All of which have been espoused by Your Ward News.
I am loath to delve further into the evidence which the Crown put before Ontario Court Judge Richard Blouin, simply by entering stories and cartoons published in YWN because that means the Star would be extending the execrable publication’s reach. But you get the picture.
Dean Embry, lawyer for Sears — a doctor who, by the way, had his medical licence revoked in 1992 after pleading guilty to two counts of sexual assault against female patients — argued Wednesday that there is a distinction between promoting hatred against all women and promoting hatred against feminists.
“Feminism obviously has a broader political meaning in our country. When Your Ward News says it’s anti-feminism, it is in that broader sense.”
Courts, said Embry, should not be in the business of “criminalizing anti-feminist views” and, look here, the paper also vilifies men with feminist views. See, equal opportunity hatred.
Just as YWN doesn’t promote hatred of all Jews, continued Embry — actually, it does — “at no point does it say all women are evil, only those Mr. Sears characterizes as feminists.”
Sears, under his own byline and his “Dimitry The Lover” pseudonym — has certainly claimed that there’s no such thing as marital rape because wives are chattel.
The judge asked: “In all situations your wife is a piece of property?”
Embry: “The articles aren’t saying you should go out and assault your wife.”
Sears was merely advancing a “conservative and traditional view of women,” added Embry.
“That was not long ago the dominant view in Canada. That was the law in Canada.’’
Expounding on behalf of his client: “So precious they should be treated like precious chattel. In my view, while highly offensive, that doesn’t promote it.’’
OK, maybe Sears does go too far, on occasion, Embry granted, even conceding “it’s difficult to walk around this” in his arguments.
But crossing the line once or twice — his assessment, unsupported as a rare overreach by the evidence — isn’t tantamount to unrelieved promotion of hatred, said Embry.
Ian McCuaig, representing St. Germaine, hit similar notes in his oral arguments.
“It’s a part of public debate now, where the line on sexual assault should be drawn.”
That much is indeed true, pivoting on the principle of consent and “reasonable belief” in consent given — the go-to defence in sexual assault trials.
“The evolution of the idea has gone somewhere that some people don’t like.”
Even so, a far distance from what St. Germaine, 77, has published in Your Ward News about women “thrilled” by rape — those “Satanic feminists,” “she-hag bitches” and femi-Marxist c---ts.”
Judge Blouin will deliver his verdict next Thursday.
The accused, who constantly smirk and chortle, have come across as cartoony figures, very similar to the caricatures that fill the pages of YWN