Editorial

By Paul Schratz

Basilian Father Alphonse de Valk is not exactly resting easy these days, and for good reason.

The hate complaint against his Catholic Insight magazine may have been dismissed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but it could be a case of surviving one battle only to wonder when the next onslaught will come.

Accused by a homosexual activist of promoting anti-homosexual hate speech, Father de Valk has racked up $20,000 in legal bills, while his accuser's case was financed by taxpayer funds.

What's more, his accuser can still appeal the decision.

To top it off, Father de Valk knows that the next case of harassment could be as near as tomorrow morning's mail.

How did we arrive in such a state, where a small Catholic magazine can be hauled before a quasi-credible tribunal and forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars defending itself for promoting politically incorrect teachings in a very politically correct world?

How is it that the Catholic Church - everyone's favourite scapegoat for intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and censorship - is defending the freedom to explore ideas, debate right and wrong, and search for truth, while the censors would shut down discussion in the name of human rights?

Father de Valk is naturally pleased by the decision, but it must be a bittersweet one for him. There's a certain martyrdom that would have accompanied a guilty verdict, and martyrdom, as the martyrs will attest, is a wonderfully effective way to spread the faith. It would also likely have led to an appeal, which would be an excellent way to reveal this farce for what it is.

A finding of guilt and the possibility of appeal is still something that could await writer Mark Steyn, whose book American Alone, The Future Belongs to Islam, landed Maclean's magazine before the commission after it published an excerpt. The Canadian Islamic Congress also filed complaints with the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

Like Catholic Insight, Maclean's had its CHRC case dismissed, prompting Steyn to joke that he was disappointed that the commission's authority would not be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

He may yet have his chance. The Ontario commission for all practical purposes found the magazine guilty but dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds. Maclean's is still waiting for the B.C. verdict.

Regardless of these somewhat positive decisions in a couple of highly visible cases, nothing prevents similar complaints from being launched in other provinces or at the federal level by other individuals who want to silence those they disagree with.

It's been said that "The process is the punishment," and in this case the process needs to be exposed. Freedom of speech is always subject to reasonable limits such as libel and slander laws, but to enact a multi-layered system of word-police who are able to indict a magazine for hatred, simply for expressing the Catholic teaching on homosexual behaviour, is chilling.

The tribunals have already had their conquests, fining the Knights of Columbus in Coquitlam for refusing to rent a hall for a lesbian wedding reception. Other Christians and Christian groups have also felt the tribunals' wrath for a range of proscribed thought and deed.

The long arm of these kangaroo courts needs reining in. An excellent idea, which I can't claim credit for because it was e-mailed to me, is that the next time one of these high-profile houndings takes place, high schools send their law, history, literature, or social science classes to see injustice in action.

As my contributor said, "It would truly be a lesson, as it would not be just theoretical, but provide hours of discussion about the nature of law, truth, justice, history...."

Not to mention due process, rules of evidence, and the presumption of innocence, all of which are in short supply in these tribunals.