Steyn vs Freud... Who Would've Thunk It?

When Macleans magazine published an excerpt from America Alone entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam", it eventually led to the magazine being subject to a human rights complaint.

Various Canadian Muslim groups objected to the excerpt, and feared it would stir up public hostility against Muslims. There may have been fair reason to worry about this (although the Human Rights complaint itself was clearly frivolous).

But part three of the Century of the Self presents a theme that puts an interesting twist on the Steyn thesis: as a spin-off off an ancient showdown between psychiatric quacks.

The quacks in case are Anna Freud -- the daughter of Sigmund Fruend, who considered the human sex drive to be dangerous -- and Whilhem Reich, who considered a healthy sex life to be the definitive factor of human mental health.

A decidated life-long virgin, Freud was considered to be something of a prude. When Reich's theories came to her attention, Freud took it upon herself to destroy her career.

Reich believed that human sexuality wasn't merely the key to human flourishing in terms of demographics alone. He also believed that orgasm was central to human mental health. By modern standards, it stands out as a lunatic idea, but it's implications for Steyn's argument are intriguing, to say the least.

In the excerpt, Steyn argues a very basic and intuitive thesis: the Muslim world is reproducing at a far faster rate than the western world. In terms of sheer numbers alone, this could put the Islamic world in the position of being able to overwhelm and envelope the rest.

This is certainly a terrifying prospect for many of Steyn's most fervent admirers, who fear Muslims.

Western and Muslim attitudes toward sex are remarkably different. Through innovations in birth control, the western world has embraced sex for pleasure like at no other time in human history, perhaps exempting the height of Roman decadence. The increasing cultural focus on sex becomes most apparent through an examination of pop culture.

Meanwhile, the (at least stereotypical) Muslim attitude toward sex is considered far less enthusiastic.

As individuals, the western world has far more sex than the Muslim world and produces far fewer children. Some may say that birth control is to blame for this state of affairs and while they would be correct, any proposal to eliminate birth control is unequivocally not the answer.

If one were to judge the comparative mental illness of the western and Muslim worlds based on Reich's theory, one may be drawn toward the issue of suicide bombers. It takes a particularly fervent individual to commit to killing themselves as a means of attacking their enemies -- some could consider this to be a symptom of some sort of mental illness.

The irony is astounding: the Muslim world has less casual sex, but more children (whom some would, rightly or wrongly, consider to be candidates for future suicide bombings). If Reich's theories had any merit at all, it would be ironic that the innovations that have allowed the western world to enjoy the mental health benefits of casual sex have also led to a state of affairs in which they've put the western world at a disadvantage.

This is, of course, assuming that one grants credence to Wilhelm Reich's theories (one should not), and that one agrees with Mark Steyn (one may not).

Measuring Women's Equality

In a political era in which many insist that left-wing feminist groups must be funded because equality must be promoted, it may be a fair question to ask:

How, precisely, does one measure women's equality.

Part two of The Spartans may provide a clue.

Comparing the treatment of women in Athens to the treatment of women in Sparta with the treatment of women in comparatively liberal and democratic Athens, the film reveals that women in Sparta were fed the same food as men, were educated, allowed to participate in sports and politics, and own property. In Athens, women were expected to remain largely invisible.

This transformed Spartan women into highly-desired sex objects among other Greek men. Athenean women didn't seem to compare to Spartan women.

But at the very heart of the superior treatment was a notion that seems intuitive, but retrograde in its implications: healthy women produce healthy children, something that a warrior society like Sparta would continually be in desperate need of.

One detects similar arguments today in the thinking of individuals like Mark Steyn, who portrays Islam -- not merely militant Islam, but all Islam -- as a threat to western (Christian) society, one that will bury it by way of demographics.

It would take centuries for demographic realities to turn against the Spartans. When it finally did, it wasn't because of the comparatively liberal freedoms enjoyed by women (as some would insist about demographic downturns today), but rather it was because of the restrictions placed upon men, who were not allowed to formally marry until they were 28 or 30.

When Sparta became threatened by its inability to produce enough young men to be warriors, one must have imagined there were many such as Steyn sounding the alarm.

When s plague descended upon Athens and left nearly one third of the Athenian population dead, a risk of mistreating women became evident: just as healthy women are necessary to produce healthy children, unhealthy women will be more suseptible to disease, and more likely to aid in its spread.

As retrograde as the Spartan approach to women seems -- granted citizenship only so they'd be willing to sacrifice their children for the good of the state -- there is a fundamental and undeniable truth in the notion:

The future of any society lies with its women. And while women shouldn't be empowered with citizenship only so they can produce children, any society (Saudi Arabia, Iran) that oppresses its women compresses its societal potential.

The Hard Decision on Human Rights Commissions

Contentious choice between abolition and reform

The hot debate over Canada's Human Rights Commissions hasn't been particularly firey recently.

That being said, if anyone can be expected to have a particularly strong opinion on the CHRC and its provincial counterparts, it's University of Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper.

Cooper, whose published work -- both with and without his frequent collaborator, David Bercuson -- focuses on the politics of public virtue, seems to see the HRCs as the most utterly blatant embodiment of the embedded state. Consequently, he seems to find a great deal of affinity for the opponents of the HRCs:

"For those who have never taken the time to read dry legal documents, consider that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act declares that hate speech is constituted by words that are likely to expose somebody to hatred or contempt - and what that has meant for Canadians.

In early October, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant gave testimony before the House of Commons justice committee, currently considering whether section 13 should be repealed. Their remarks, available on You Tube, provide a short but thorough examination of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and its works.

They argue that the censorship implications of section 13 are an abomination in a constitutional democracy, that section 13 is the reason for so many complaints, and is why the entire administrative structure of this taxpayer-supported, government-backed human rights industry is broken past the point where it can be fixed. Any country, at least where freedom of expression and speech is truly valued, would have dissolved this outfit years ago."

Whether or not the censorship facilitated by section 13 is warranted or justified is a matter for some debate.

Most Canadians would likely agree that protecting minorities in Canada -- whether they be defined as such by their ethnicity, sexuality or religion -- is worth reasonably curtailing free speech in cases where the intent is evidently to incite hatred or contempt against them.

The trouble is there's no objective test for the intent to incite hatred or contempt. More Canadians still would likely agree that a more worthy course of action would be to censor cases where speech clearly intends to incite violence is likely another matter altogether.

Even Levant and Steyn would likely be more than happy to support that.

Of course, it's important to note that Steyn and Levant can hardly be considered impartial judges of the Commission, considering their run-ins with it:

"Both Steyn and Levant have encountered Canada’s human rights bureaucrats first hand and written about their hair-raising experiences. The larger story, of an out-of-control bureaucracy that transformed itself from an organization charged with conciliation of differences among citizens into a politically motivated attack organ, should also trouble Canadians."

Levant's and Steyn's troubling experience with the HRCs -- finding themselves having to defend themselves against complaints that should have been summarily dismissed -- have revealled that the CHRC has taken on the most eggregious features of the embedded state.

Human Rights Commissioner Dean Steacy once famously remarked that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value."

Yer if Steacy had consulted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- the law that the CHRC is charged with upholding -- he would see that the right to freedom of speech and expression are enshrined within that document. In his eager embrace of the role of speech/thought police, Steacy had disregarded the purpose for the Commission's existence.

In its place, Steacy and his fellow Commissioners seem to have replaced the continued existence of the commission itself and the preservation of its censorship powers as the raison d'etre of the CHRC.

Out of genuine reverence for the concept of human rights and true detestation of discrimination, Canadians have approved of the existence of these commissions, but have often been shocked at the HRCs' excesses:

"Because most of us are in favour of human rights, Canadians have accorded the benefit of the doubt to anything calling itself a human rights commission. That favourable impression has depended on maintaining a veil of ignorance over how these bodies actually operate. After Steyn and Levant (among others) made their operations public, it is clear to all but the willfully blind that their reason is entirely undeserved.

Instead of dealing with genuine civil liberties, Canada’s human rights commissions have taken upon themselves such tasks as censoring cartoons and jokes, preventing RCMP instructors at Depot in Regina from raising their voices at recruits, or compelling a fast-food restaurant to keep an employee whose medical condition makes it impossible for her to comply with the company’s hand-washing policy.

They have invented new categories of crime and imposed lifetime bans on uttering opinions that hurt the feelings of someone or other. Senior counsel for the CHRC has advanced the opinion that their job is to end hate, a very human, though not particularly, edifying emotion.

They aspire to become more than a thought or speech police; they seek to be an emotion police.

In order to achieve these ambitions, members of the CHRC have joined neo-Nazi websites and posted messages on them in the hopes of provoking some dim-witted hatemonger to post something equally vile. Then one of their friends or even colleagues would be able to lodge a complaint.

In a real court (and to common sense) this is entrapment by an agent provocateur. In the kangaroo courts of Canada’s human rights commissions, it’s standard operating procedure.

Moreover, the CHRC employees are perfectly aware that what they are doing cannot stand the light of day. On at least one occasion they hacked their way into a wi-fi account of an Ottawa woman and posted their musings from her account. Incidentally, all this malfeasance by your tax-supported servants has been documented in sworn testimony by CHRC staff."

The methods employed by the CHRC have proven to be very successful.

"With such procedures at their disposal, it is no wonder that, until last month, the CHRC had a 100 per cent conviction rate -- the envy in this respect of North Korea and Cuba, which occasionally stumble in the administration of justice. Naturally the CHRC announced it would appeal this stain on its perfect record."

Of course, what Cooper might have meant to say was that the CHRC has a near-perfect conviction rate in cases it has chosen to pursue. As many should recall, the complaint against Mark Steyn was dismissed, as was the complaint against Levant.

As it turns out, however, one of the most striking issues surrounding the HRCs is the manner in which they often exceed their mandate. The task of conciliating two conflicting parties has often been cast out the window in the preference for punishing them.

As Patrick Nugent, the counsel for Dr Darren Lund in Alberta's Boissoin v Lund case notes, HRCs are not supposed to make punitive judgements. They are, however, allowed to require defendents to pay damages for their actions, but Nugent himself notes that HRCs often cross this particular line, as he suggests they did in Alberta.

"At the centre of the power of the human rights bureaucracy is a justification of the censorship provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, namely section 13. It is based on a massive yet legally untested expansion of a nearly 20-year-old decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, in the 'Taylor case.' In that decision the Court decided that hate speech by a neo-Nazi meant 'extreme feelings of opprobrium and enmity' against a group, and not 'subjective opinion of offensiveness.' Today human rights officials have completely reversed the ruling."

With the many, many valid questions that have been raised about the CHRC by its growing stable of critics, one would expect that the Commissions would be prepared to meet some of that criticism by opening their organization to the light of day.

Instead, the CHRC has indulged itself in Nixonian politics, replete with an "enemies list" drafted by its Chief Commissioner:

"Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the controversy over the human rights commissions is the response of the Chief Commissioner of the CHRC. She has complained long and loud of unfair criticism and announced: 'I have a file' on her critics. 'I’m a public servant ... and I’m not going to sit by.' As Terry O’Neill, who is on the list, wrote in the National Post early in October: 'Big Sister’s been watching me.'"

This represents just another embedded state tendency by the CHRC. Instead of coming clean about the Commission's excesses and promising to do better, Jennifer Lynch is instead investigating her critics.

With all of these troublesome facts about the HRCs afoot, it's unsurprising that Cooper comes down firmly on the side of abolishing them altogether:

"The duty of Parliament is clear. Remove not just the offensive section 13. Dismantle the entire Orwellian structure."

But Canadians recognize the key role that the CHRC and its provincial counterparts play. Abolishing the commissions would be throwing this baby out with the bathwater.

Reforming the commissions, toughening the standard of evidence required in panel hearings, and placing stronger constraints on the censorship powers of the commissions is a course of action that would be preferable to all Canadians.

Regardless of what Canadian Human Rights Commissioners may want Canadians to believe, the status quo is simply not tolerable.

Guess What Mark Steyn and PZ Myers Have In Common?

At first glimpse, it may seem that Mark Steyn and PZ Myers have very little in common.

Mark Steyn is a cultural critic who routinely provokes Human Rights complaints and general outrage from the left side of the political spectrum.

PZ Myers is a tenured biology professor and devout atheist who routinely provokes outrage from the right side of the political spectrum with his tirades against religion.

Myers and Steyn couldn't seem more different. But as it turns out, these two individuals have more in common than the fact that they've attracted a similarly single-minded collection of zealous followers.

As it turns out, each man has a very similar attitude toward Islam.

Mark Steyn's stance on Islam has long been well known. He's an advocate of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory. He's even gone so far as to argue that western civilization needs to significantly bump up its fertility rate in order to prevent being supplanted by Islam.

In other words, Steyn portrays Islam as a menacing, dangerous threat to the so-called "civilized" world. He's been hauled before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for saying this.

Meanwhile, in a post at PZ Myers' blog, Pharyngula, Myers relates the story of Muzzammil Hassan, an individual who established a television station with the goal of refuting stereotypes about Islam. Instead, Muzzamill wound up murdering and decapitating his wife when she demanded a divorce.

Myers, who's never encountered a slander against religion he didn't immediately fall in love with, reaches an interesting conclusion: "it's not a stereotype, but simply a fact that Islam is a patriarchal religion of misogyny."

It's amazing that Myers, a darling of those on the left wing who want to firmly entrench atheism as a fundamental part of the progressive political movement, could walk away from such comments unscathed. Yet the progressive left that would so gleefully denounce Mark Steyn for expressing the same sentiment has remained predictably quiet in regards to the matter.

One has to imagine that it doesn't matter much that both men are approaching their argument from assumptions that are fundamentally flawed.

Separate portions of Benazir Bhutto's Reconciliation could be used to refute either man.

Bhutto's explanations of how the Koran actually mandates fair treatment of women and grants them political and civil rights would prove to be a significant challenge to Myers' sentiments. (Also, the fact that Mohammad's first wife was the first Muslim is a detail that seems to escape Islamophobes.)

Bhutto's dismantling of the clash of civilizations thesis in the closing chapter of teh book would confront Steyn with the reality that freedom and democracy, not the end of Islam, is most likely to erase any threat posed to the Western world by the Muslim world. If she were still alive today, Bhutto would remind Steyn that Western countries haven't often been good allies to Muslim democrats.

Sadly, Bhutto isn't alive to counter the fear mongering language of either man, having been martyred in the name of bringing democracy to Pakistan.

But it's amazing how much these two have in common when it regards Islam -- and equally amazing that Myers is being allowed a free pass for his Islamophobia.

CHRC to CIC: Put a Sock In It

Human Rights Commission refuses to hear Steyn complaint

One of the many ongoing controversies swirling around the Canadian Human Rights Commission drew nearer to a close yesterday, as it dismissed the complaint raised by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean's magazine.

The complaint stemmed from Maclean's publishing of "The Future Belongs to Islam", an excerpt from Steyn's (actually counter-factually titled) America Alone which insists that Muslims are a direct threat to the Western world due to higher birthrates and antithetical values.

The Commission did take some of the objectionable nature of the article into account when rendering their decision.

"The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike," wrote Commission secretary Lucie Veillette. "Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court."

Naturally, the CIC has its own opinion regarding the decision.

"We are disappointed that the Tribunal made this decision without hearing the compelling evidence of hate and the expert testimony we recently presented to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal," CIC lawyer Faisal Joseph said in a news release. "The Commission’s decision contradicts the findings of its own Investigator’s report which states that this Article contains hallmarks of hate identified by the Commission in its earlier case law."

While Steyn's article is, indeed full of some rather alarming generalizations, the CHRC's decision should serve as a reminder to the most litigious amongst Canada's Islamic community that, when confronted by sensationalist commentaries that do, unfortuantely, contain kernels of truth (no matter how small or potentially distorted), the onus remains on them to rebut it -- not on human rights law to insist that some unpleasant kernels of truth about Islam may never even be spoken.

Of course, Steyn and various individuals like him have their own fair share of questions to answer about Islam and their treatment of it.

For example, one wonders what they would have to say about Muslims Against Sharia, a blog run by moderate Muslims -- the very moderate Muslims that many of those who subscribe to Steyn's teachings insist don't exist -- that has actually supported them in the past.

But so long as Islam, and its impact upon Canada, remain controversial the debate will very much remain necessary. The CHRC's decision in this case is a welcome one, although the triumph is far from complete: this case is still being considered against Macleans in the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.

Hopefully, the BCHRC will make the right decision as well.

CIC Complaint Reveals Disturbing Matters Regarding Human Rights Commission

Human Rights Commissions being abused for political motivations? Seemingly so

In a recent op/ed column published in The National Post, Ezra Levant takes aim at the recent filing of a human rights complaint against Maclean's magazine.

According to Levant:

"Its crime? Refusing the CIC's absurd demand that Maclean's print a five-page letter to the editor in response to an article the CIC didn't like."

It's unsurprising that Levant would have something to say about this matter, as he himself has found himself subject to such manipulations of Canadian human rights law.

The complaint deals with a feature ran in the 20 October, 2006 issue of Maclean's. Entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam", the feature is a reprint of a chapter from America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It by Mark Steyn.

Now, for those who pay close enough attention to the work at hand, there should be little question that Steyn's column is unmitigated intellectual garbage. It paints a very unflattering portrait of Steyn's feverish worldview, wherein somehow every evil at work in the world today, including Islamic terrorism, can be conveniently blamed on the very concept of social security and universal health care.

In the end, the intended point of the article becomes agonizingly clear: if only westerners would have more babies, we wouldn't need to fear the big, bad Muslims who are "transforming Europe into Eurabia".

In fact, "The Future Belongs to Islam" deals in many of the same logical fallacies pedalled by many dilletantish "foreign policy experts" such as David Frum and Michael Ignatieff, including the "Islamic death cult" plopper (god forbid anyone should ever believe that perhaps Islamic terrorists do have grievances or goals, be they legitimate or illegitimate).

A good number of the ideas in "The Future Belongs to Islam" don't stand up to precursory scrutiny, just as the very premise of his book, America Alone, melts before the listing of the NATO states currently involved in Afghanistan (America Alone... oh, except for Canada, Britain, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands...).

That being said, its in this vein that the best way to combat the kind of ignorance being spread by Steyn and his ilk isn't in a Human Rights Tribunal. The best way to combat Steyn's sophistic trash is by refuting it in the media.

But that doesn't mean that Maclean's should be legally obligated to print a five-page letter to the editor refuting Steyn's work. That being said, Maclean's isn't the only game in town. There are plenty of other publications in which Steyn's feature could be refuted (although all of them will draw the line at a five page letter to the editor).

Virtually every publication in North America places some limits on the length of the letters it will consider publishing. Yet Levant predicts that the Human Rights Tribunal may rule against Maclean's magazine:

"It may shock those who do not follow human rights law in Canada, but Maclean's will probably lose.

Forcing editors to publish rambling letters is not a human right in Canada. But that's not how the CIC worded their complaint, filed with the B.C., Ontario and federal human rights commissions. Maclean's is "flagrantly Islamophobic" and "subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt" according to a CIC statement. "I felt personally victimized," said Khurrum Awan at the CIC's recent press conference. All this because Maclean's dared to run a column discussing the demographic rise of Islam in the West."

Levant notes that the CIC has tried to use the courts to silence those critical of Islam before, but also notes that using the Human Rights Commission may prove to be more productive than tactics used in the past.

"It's a new strategy for the CIC, which in the past has tried unsuccessfully to sue news media it disagreed with -- including the National Post -- using Canada's defamation laws. But Canada's civil courts aren't the best tool for that sort of bullying. In a defamation lawsuit, the CIC would have to hire its own lawyers, follow the rules of court and prove that it suffered real damages -- and the newspapers would have truth and fair comment as defences. Launching a nuisance suit against Maclean's would result in an embarrassing loss for the CIC, a court order to pay the magazine's legal fees and it would deepen the CIC's reputation as a group of radicals who don't understand Canadian values. (Three years ago, Mohamed Elmasry, the CIC's Egyptian-born president, declared that every adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for terrorists).

So civil lawsuits won't work. Criminal charges are a non-starter, too: Canada's hate-speech laws are reserved for extreme acts of incitement, and charges can only be laid with the approval of the justice minister. And in criminal court, the accused must be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. No chance there."

Levant contends that the activist nature of the HRC favours complainants:

"That's why human rights commissions are the perfect instrument for the CIC. The CIC doesn't even have to hire a lawyer: Once the complaint has been accepted by the commissions, taxpayers' dollars and government lawyers are used to pursue the matter. Maclean's, on the other hand, will have to hire its own lawyers with its own money. Rules of court don't apply. Normal rules of evidence don't apply. The commissions are not neutral; they're filled with activists, many of whom aren't even lawyers and do not understand the free-speech safeguards contained in our constitution."

Those who have paid even passing attention to the human rights debate in Canada are well aware of the fact that many self-described right-wingers oppose the human rights commission.

It isn't as if they're disinterested individuals, either. Consider the recent furor over a decision by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission to impose a lifetime ban on Bill Whatcott from criticizing homosexuality. He had recently published and distributed a pamphlet he alleged quoted a classified ad for "Men seeking boys". Whatcott more recently ran for mayor of Edmonton, and filed his nomination papers wearing a "homosexuality is a sin" T-shirt (classy guy).

Yet in the Maclean's complaint, these individuals may have finally found themselves a horse to race.

If the Whatcott example is held up as an example of the punishment that Maclean's could recieve if found guilty (perhaps a permanent ban on publishing articles criticizing Islam), the Whatcott precedent could actually be transformed from something relatively reasonable (although this will inevitably be in the eye of the beholder) into something outright sinister.

Even merely ordering a retraction and apology could turn out to be very troublesome.

"The punishments that these commissions can order are bizarre. Besides fines to the government and payments to complainants, defendants can be forced to "apologize" for having unacceptable political or religious opinions.

An apology might not sound onerous, yet it is far more troubling than a fine. Ordering a person -- or a magazine -- to say or publish words that they don't believe is an Orwellian act of thought control. The editor of Maclean's, Ken Whyte, maintains his magazine is fair. But human rights commissions have the power to order him to publish a confession that he's a bigot -- or, as in one Ontario case, even order someone to study Islam. Even convicted murderers cannot be "ordered" to apologize."

In fact, as it turns out, using the human rights commission to attack Maclean's may turn out to be an abuse of the very human rights codes these commissions are charged with administering.

"Some of Canada's human rights codes cover "publications." Those powers were originally meant to cover things like signs saying No Jews Allowed or Whites Only (in human rights jargon, symbols that "indicate discrimination") or a swastika or burning KKK cross planted on someone's yard.

You don't need to be a lawyer to know that a magazine article is not what the founders of human rights commissions had in mind. As Alan Borovoy, the general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association -- and one of the architects of modern Canadian human rights law -- wrote last year, "during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech." Censoring debates was "hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions."

Borovoy's warning has gone unheeded. The opposite, actually -- it signalled to the CICs of the world that human rights commissions are the perfect instrument to pursue their agenda of censorship. At the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission, for example, one single activist -- a lawyer named Richard Warman, who used to work at the commission himself -- has filed 26 complaints, nearly 50% of all complaints under that commission's "hate messages" section. He's turned it into a part-time job, winning tens of thousands of dollars in "awards" from people he's complained about in the past few years. Warman is a liberal activist, who likes to complain against Web sites he calls racist or homophobic. He's had the common sense to stick to suing small, oddball bloggers who can't fight back. But surely the CIC has observed Warman's winning streak, and will use his precedents to go after Maclean's."

However, Levant also cites the case of Reverend Stephen Boissoin who wrote a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate, published on June 17, 2002, wherein he railed against an alleged pro-gay agenda in Canadian schools, and exhorting that "enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied."

"An even more terrifying precedent recently was set in Alberta. The case involved a letter to the editor written by a Christian pastor and published in the Red Deer Advocate newspaper. The letter was a zealous, even rude, expression of the pastor's belief that homosexuality was a sin, and that there was a homosexual political "agenda" that had to be stopped. But instead of joining the debate by writing a letter to the editor, a local teacher complained to the human rights commission.

The commission's one-woman panel--a divorce lawyer with no expertise in constitutional rights -- ruled that "the publication's exposure of homosexuals to hatred and contempt trumps the freedom of speech afforded in the Charter." That was it: Freedom of speech, and of the press, and religion, all of which are called "fundamental freedoms" in our Constitution, now come second to the newly discovered right of a thin-skinned bystander not to be offended."

Levant actually fails to mention that University of Calgary Education professor Darren Lund waited until after a 17-year-old gay teenager was assaulted until he decided to file a complaint.

Whether the assault was coincidental or not (the assault took place two weeks after the article was printed; one may make of that what they will), Lund may have been justified in feeling the letter caused harm.

“I do stand on the principle that I think the letter did expose people to hatred and I think the government, if it’s serious about its human-rights legislation, needs to make a ruling in this case and I think it’s very clear what they need to do,” Lund remarked.

Yet, the Boissoin case did take a turn for the unsettling, when the government itself chose to get involved, and certainly not on behalf of a pastor who was already finding himself in a position of legal disadvantage.

"In a rare move, the Alberta government sent a lawyer to intervene in the case -- against the pastor. The government lawyer argued that "if people were allowed to simply hide behind the rubric of political and religious opinion, they would defeat the entire purpose of the human rights legislation." Borovoy's well-intentioned laws aren't about making sure aboriginals can get taxi rides anymore.

The human rights panellist in question -- Lori Andreachuk, a former Tory riding association president -- wholeheartedly embraces this expansion of the definiton of "human rights." "It is, in my view, nonsensical to enact human rights legislation, to protect the dignity and human rights of Albertans, only to have it overridden by the expression of opinion in all forms," she wrote. Though no harm was proved to have come from the pastor's letter, it "was likely to expose gay persons to more hatred in the community" -- precisely the same language used by the CIC in their complaint against Maclean's.

In a ruling that spanned some 80 pages, Andreachuk spared just two paragraphs to explain why she was overruling the Charter's guarantee of freedom of speech. In real courts, a demanding legal hurdle called the Oakes Test must be passed before that can be done. The reason for infringing a Charter right must be "pressing and substantial," the infringement couldn't be "arbitrary or irrational" and it must be as "minimal" as possible. None of that analysis was even attempted by Andreachuk -- that's boring legal stuff for real judges in real courts. The Oakes Test was named after David Oakes, a man charged with trafficking of hash oil, who beat the rap using the Charter. Accused drug dealers get the benefit of the Constitution, but not accused pastors."

It is indeed troubling that Canadian human rights commissions are allowed to operate in a manner so contradictory to Canadian legal traditions, while handing down rulings that are still legally binding.

With the filing of the recent complaint against Maclean's magazine, there may finally be no way around this.

"There will be more human rights complaints like the CIC's, and more staggering rulings like the Alberta decision. It's odd: Mohamed Elmasry, an apologist for Islamo-fascism, using the same tools as an "anti-racist" leftist like Richard Warman. At first glance, they may seem like opposites, but they're actually identical: Both are illiberal censors who have found a quirk in our legal system, and are using it to undermine our Western traditions of freedom. Until last week, I would have thought that Maclean's magazine was too big a fish for them to swallow. I don't think that anymore."

While one of the principal functions of any healthy democracy is protecting its most vulnerable members from abuse, it may be time for Canadians to finally admit that two wrongs don't make a right.

While a belief in human rights is unquestionably one of the most important foundations of Canadian society, so is the belief in the rule of law. Yet when the principle of legal equality -- another fundamental foundation of Canadian society -- begins to take a backseat to the political motivations of those who use them to further their agenda.

It's time for Human Rights Commissions to start functioning like actual courts of law. If those administering these Commissions aren't up to this task, then the time has come to discard these commissions altogether, and start enforcing Human Rights Codes through the courts.

The CIC complaint against Maclean's magazine is both an abandonment of the CIC's responsibility in this matter -- namely, refuting Steyn's original article -- and an abuse of the system.

It cannot be allowed to stand.