Freedom of Speech NOT Absolute - SCOC Rules Anti-Gay Flyers Contravene Sask. Human Rights Code

[Wetcoaster]

The SCOC confirmed that hate speech is not constitutionally protected as free speech.

In the case of Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott [2013] SCC 11 the SCOC has ruled unanimously that William Whatcott a Saskatchewan anti-gay bigot violated human rights laws (Saskatchewan Human rights Code) when he distributed four pamphlets denouncing homosexuals in 2000 and 2001 as it was akin to hate speech. Two of the four flyers did not contravene the law. The SCOC also ruled that a portion of the Saskatchewan Code is unconstitutional.

http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12876/index.do

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld key provisions against hate speech in the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, but struck down some of the code's wording in a case prompted by flyers handed out by a religious anti-gay activist, Bill Whatcott.

The court found that most of the pertinent section of the code is constitutional. Although the legislation infringes the rights to free expression and free religion, the court is allowing most of it as reasonable limits (under Section 1 of the Charter).

Reached at his home in Weyburn, Sask., Whatcott expressed disappointment but also defiance.

"It's dreadful," he said of the decision. "It's a dark day for Canada."

Whatcott said he refuses to pay the $7,500 in damages as directed by the high court. He also says the ruling means the Supreme Court can impose its morals on the rest of the country and limit free speech.

He also said he'll likely be violating Saskatchewan's human rights code for the rest of his life, because he will not stop preaching against homosexuality.

David Arnot, chief commissioner of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, hailed the ruling, saying it goes to the heart of what it means to be a Canadian.

"It basically says under no circumstances should hate speech be tolerated," Arnot said.

A Saskatoon man who was one of the complainants in the case says he's pleased, too.

After reading about the Whatcott pamphlets in church, James Komar said he had little choice but to speak out.

"If I don't stand up for myself why should I expect other people to stand up for me," he said.

Part of code struck down

The court struck down the part of the legislation that includes speech that "ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons on the basis of a prohibited ground." It found those words are not rationally connected to the objective of protecting people from hate speech.

The court left in place the ban on speech that exposes, or tends to expose, persons or groups to hatred.

The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission had appealed a court decision that overturned its original ruling against William Whatcott, who published and distributed four anti-gay flyers in towns and cities in Saskatchewan in 2001 and 2002. Four people filed complaints with the commission over the flyers.

Whatcott's flyers used words like "filth," "propaganda" and "sodomy" to describe gay relationships and the discussion of equality.

Saskatchewan law prohibits publishing or broadcasting anything that "exposes or tends to expose to hatred, ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons on the basis of a prohibited ground."

Two of four flyers hate speech

The first two sets of flyers were titled "Keep homosexuality out of Saskatoon's public schools" and "Sodomites in our public schools."

The other two were photocopies of classified ads with Whatcott's handwritten comments on them stating the ads were for "men seeking boys."

The Supreme Court found the first two flyers did constitute hate speech and reinstated the Saskatchewan tribunal's finding, including $7,500 in damages against Whatcott that were to be paid to complainants.

The court upheld an appeal court's decision on the second two flyers, ruling against the human rights commission. It found that it was unreasonable to find the second two flyers "contain expression that a reasonable person … would find as exposing or likely to expose persons of same-sex orientation to detestation and vilification."

"These flyers are potentially offensive but lawful contributions to the public debate on the morality of homosexuality," Justice Marshall Rothstein wrote in the decision.

This was the first time the Supreme Court examined the Saskatchewan law.

The Supreme Court of Canada's decision was unanimous.

The decision was made by a six-judge panel because one justice retired and wasn't eligible to take part in it. Two other justices are new appointments and weren't eligible because they didn't hear the arguments in the case.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/02/27/pol-supreme-court-whatcott-free-speech.html

[Buggernut]

You have the right to free

Speech as long as you're not

Dumb enough to actually try it.

Know your rights!

[Wetcoaster]

You have the right to free

Speech as long as you're not

Dumb enough to actually try it.

Know your rights!

[AppleJack]

Good its about time someone put a stop to the spreading of hate in the name of religion (or any other type of movement/etc). You want to say that you are against something that is fine and all you have the right to do that, but when you over-step those rights and trample on someone's rights, when you use your own beliefs to make someone feel unsafe that is just wrong! I am very happy that this ruling was allowed to go through. Perhaps more people would stop and think about what they are saying and what kind of message they are putting across. I never understood why people often use 'hate' as a way to spread their message. Even if I agreed with the message this guy was trying to spread (which I don't) I would have been turned off by the methods he chose to use.

[G.K. Chesterton]

http://www.johnstackhouse.com/2013/02/27/the-supreme-court-protects-the-hateful-hate-speech-law/

The Supreme Court Protects the Hateful “Hate Speech” Law

February 27, 2013

A rump of the Supreme Court of Canada (several justices did not participate in the ruling) voted unanimously to uphold parts of Saskatchewan’s hate speech law, parts that square with similar legislation in other provinces and at the federal level. I will look forward to legal experts’ opinions about the ruling, but here’s my initial reaction:

I wish this country’s leaders would act like adults, rather than adolescents.

Slander is a bad thing: it’s illegal. So is libel, and it’s illegal. So are other varieties of dangerous speech, such as inciting to riot, treason, and other manifestly intolerable speech-acts.

“Hate speech,” however, is something else. Here’s the key paragraph in the Supreme Court decision:

The definition of “hatred” set out in Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 892, with some modifications, provides a workable approach to interpreting the word “hatred” as it is used in legislative provisions prohibiting hate speech. Three main prescriptions must be followed. First, courts must apply the hate speech prohibitions objectively. The question courts must ask is whether a reasonable person, aware of the context and circumstances, would view the expression as exposing the protected group to hatred. Second, the legislative term “hatred” or “hatred and contempt” must be interpreted as being restricted to those extreme manifestations of the emotion described by the words “detestation” and “vilification”. This filters out expression which, while repugnant and offensive, does not incite the level of abhorrence, delegitimization and rejection that risks causing discrimination or other harmful effects. Third, tribunals must focus their analysis on the effect of the expression at issue, namely whether it is likely to expose the targeted person or group to hatred by others. The repugnancy of the ideas being expressed is not sufficient to justify restricting the expression, and whether or not the author of the expression intended to incite hatred or discriminatory treatment is irrelevant. The key is to determine the likely effect of the expression on its audience, keeping in mind the legislative objectives to reduce or eliminate discrimination. In light of these three directives, the term “hatred” contained in a legislative hate speech prohibition should be applied objectively to determine whether a reasonable person, aware of the context and circumstances, would view the expression as likely to expose a person or persons to detestation and vilification on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Christians, of all people, should be against speech that promotes hatred. Our Lord tells us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Our Bible tells us that every word we utter should be wholesome and helpful (Ephesians 4:29). We’re officially (if not always consistently) in favour of speech that promotes love, not hate.

Among the speech that Christians count as loving, however, is speech that describes evil as such. Loving speech includes accurate names for things, includes denouncing what is wrong, and includes exhorting people to be and do what is right. Such loving speech might come from an addictions counselor, a physician, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a pastor, or a parent.

Such speech is not always welcomed by its recipients. Sometimes it is, instead, resented. But sometimes it is still the right speech for the occasion. Telling the truth in love is sometimes exactly what is needed, and to withhold it would be wrong.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, it seems to me, leaves dangerously wide open the prospects of free and even helpful speech being curtailed and, indeed, punished.

The issue at hand, of course, was a Christian preacher publicly naming homosexuality as evil and condemning certain behaviours by some kinds of homosexuals.

Well, then, to put the shoe on the other foot, Thomas Mulcair says that evangelicals, because most of us believe that homosexuality is not within the range of acceptable sexual outlooks and behaviours, are positively “un-Canadian.” I look forward to a successful prosecution of him before the provincial Human Rights Commission of his choosing.

More broadly, Richard Dawkins says that Christian belief is a cultural virus, horribly deforming and ultimately destroying everything it can. I look forward to Dawkins’s books being banned in Canada and to him being arrested the next time he sets foot in this country.

But let’s forget, for the moment, the categories most prominent in the actual case before the Court, namely, “Christians,” “homosexuals,” and so on. I think pimps are loathsome. So are child-molesting clergy. So are torturers of pets. Am I to be liable to hate-speech prosecution because I think and say that such people are terribly, terribly wicked? It would seem so. And that seems just ridiculous. And obviously dangerous.

What’s most troubling about this judgment is its implications for everybody. The law prohibits any speech that manifests “abhorrence, delegitimization and rejection that risks causing discrimination or other harmful effects.” Note that no one has to demonstrate that the speech produces any “discrimination.” It just has to “risk causing discrimination” OR “other harmful effects.” Such as what effects? A surge of anger at being labelled something bad? A moment’s discomfort? A twinge of sadness?

I think this decision was foolish. Therefore, I think that the members of the Supreme Court of Canada who rendered this judgment were, at least in this instance, foolish. I submit that you should think so too. And now, off I go to defend myself in court because I have challenged their competency, which surely has to wound their feelings at least somewhat—and, worse, I have encouraged you to doubt their wisdom also. To cause my fellow Canadian citizens to question the intelligence and prudence of the highest court in the land surely must count as a “harmful effect,” however slight.

And that’s the point: “however slight.”

Inciting to riot is a big deal. Ruining someone’s reputation is to cause obvious and significant damage. Treason really matters. We have laws against these and other forms of demonstrably intolerably harmful speech, speech that produces effects that render the normal functioning of our society impossible.

But so-called hate speech does not make the normal functioning of our society impossible. I don’t like it, sure, when a prominent author says that people like me (Christians) are manifestly more stupid and wicked than people like him. I don’t like it, of course, when the leader of a national political party asserts that I am not fit to hold the passport I do. So when these things happen, I have a good cry, and then I pull myself together and get back to work. That’s what adults do.

If, to be sure, someone tries to sabotage my livelihood on ideological grounds, as has happened to me once, at least, then I’ll jolly well hold them accountable. And I’m glad that, in my case, the system worked to prevent that person’s damaging speech doing me lasting harm. But a democratic society requires the maximum latitude for people to speak freely: to disagree with their politicians and their bosses, to render negative judgments on their students or employees, to criticize plays and books and movies, and to denounce evils, as they see them—and those that do them.

I think Islamists are not just “different” or “less good”: I think that they and their ideology are simply inimical in Canada. I think the same about their Christian counterparts, and about anyone else who wants to replace our pluralistic democracy with a totalitarian regime. I think you should think so, too. So what? If they happened across this weblog post, they might feel a bit badly about my not immediately affirming them. But for them to have any greater reaction than that, let alone to demand that the law of the land require that I not say such things, is to act like a petulant teenager, not like a responsible adult.

Speech that demonstrably results in important damage is one thing. Speech that might result in anything that “a reasonable person” might find “harmful” in some unspecified way and degree does not warrant outlawing.

I fully recognize that the rejoinder will come, “Oh, stop being so alarmist. You’re worrying about nothing. Only really, really bad speech will be prosecuted in this way.”

Well, I warn you know that I will find any such a response to my argument to be harmful and may well have to report it to the Human Rights Commission. Make your comments, then, with great care.

[sigh]

[SpinDrive]

"It's dreadful," he said of the decision. "It's a dark day for Canada."

Whatcott said he refuses to pay the $7,500 in damages as directed by the high court.

He also says the ruling means the Supreme Court can impose its morals on the rest of the country and limit free speech.