ENFORCING CONFORMITY TO PROTECT DIVERSITY?

LAW SOCIETIES WIELD POWER OF THE STATE WITHOUT TRUE ACCOUNTABILITY

The weirdest thing about the Supreme Court decision that religious freedom essentially means non-religious people can disrupt a religious gathering is that it now seems normal. Who really thought the court would side with Trinity Western’s battle to have lawyers accredited in Ontario and B.C. after disgracing themselves and the profession by not having sex outside traditional marriage for their entire time in law school?

It’s now apparently illegal for a group of people gathered for some shared private purpose to agree not to have sex outside marriage. And this is freedom?

It’s not really law either.

As two justices noted in a blistering dissent, the majority’s use of “Charter values” rather than actual Charter rights creates a Humpty Dumpty world of postmodern jurisprudence in which nobody knows where they stand.

Canada used to be a country where people had the right to go their own way provided they didn’t hurt others. And much of the postmodern thrust to dissolve “repressive” institutions is ostensibly taking that goal to a new level. Yet the result of these “Charter values” is that people cannot get together to do something they all want to do because others disapprove.

As I argued three weeks ago, liberal talk of diversity is increasingly obviously a red herring.

Canada has roughly two dozen law schools by Wikipedia’s count (some media outlets list fewer). Virtually all share a secular, progressive, critical-legal-studies urban ambience and a student body most of whom not only don’t attend church, they don’t know where it is or what goes on there. Virtually all law students are having premarital sex or trying to, except the married ones who, overwhelmingly, were not virgins on their wedding night.

Now perhaps it is a Brave New World that hath such people in it and the bozos at Trinity Western are repressed, reactionary meanies. But one thing they are not is typical. For the liberal juggernaut to crush TWU law school means imposing uniformity in the name of diversity.

Another thing the Trinity Western people are not is coercive. Nobody would have had to go to their law school, or continue to abide by its rules once they left. It’s not even obvious to me how much injury a young liberal, gay or straight, would really suffer by experimenting with a few years without sex and see if they exploded, assuming they didn’t sneak off and do the deed.

But even if they didn’t end up liking or learning from it, it would have been voluntary. Instead, the Court ruled that Canada can’t have one single small remote law school where people you don’t know refrain from sex you like. So don’t talk to me about diversity.

The real coercion here is coming from law societies that wield the power of the state without the accountability created by democratic institutions.

And instead of using that power to make sure people who get to be lawyers are competent to represent clients, they are insisting that law grads be morally upright as the majority now understands that term. Which means denying them lifestyle choice.

To crush freedom of association, religion and conscience and force conformity on people in your image is an old and ugly Puritan temptation. Far better to say you’re the ones creating new opportunities. Hence much talk of access, opportunity and openness. “A huge win for LGBTQ students.” But what did they win?

If TWU had been able to open its law school would one single person of any philosophical or sexual orientation been denied the chance to become a lawyer they might otherwise have had? Of course not. It would have created more law school spaces overall, and freed up a few conventional liberal law school spots by drawing off some socially conservative students. And Canada in 2018 is not Mississippi Burning.

Does anyone seriously contend that without the brave Atticus Finches in our law societies and on the bench, law school administrators would cry as one, “Yah, now we can shut out those dirty queers and fornicators?” Or is it those dirty conservative Christians, Muslims and Jews we’re sticking it to, reducing their freedom of religion to the right to sit at home wishing they could live their faith along with their fellows in a voluntarily chosen private setting?

Remember: law is a private profession. Though governments do litigate, overwhelmingly it is private lawyers in a field they chose representing private clients who chose them. And even publicly funded and supervised universities are not meant to be arms of the state. Indeed, we cherish “academic freedom.”

Unless, of course, you go against “Charter values” like the Playboy philosophy at which point we thwack you.

So the weirdest thing about this decision is that we no longer find it weird to call intolerance tolerance.

WE NO LONGER FIND IT WEIRD TO CALL INTOLERANCE TOLERANCE.