Blast From Past: The Dawn Of The Speechy Wars

It's ancient history now, but nevertheless an interesting addition to our knowledge of the early days of the Canadian Speechy Conflict...

Connie and Marc Fournier--owners of the oft sued FreeDominion BBS for "Principled Conservatives"-- have recently received a large if largely redacted set of files from the CHRC (Canadian Human Rights Commission). They have created a .pdf of this material, which pertains to the first hate-speech complaint raised against them by one Marie-Lynne Gentes in 2007.

And, reading through the documents, it looks as though Connie and Marc got screwed. Not by Richard Warman or the CHRC or Marie-Lynne Gentes, but by anti-gay activist Bill Whatcott, who they have defended fiercely as an ally over the years.

(As an aside: criticizing Bill was what got me booted from FreeD. I told Connie and Marc: This guy is bad news. You need more enemies like me around to keep you out of the trouble your friends get you into. But they didn't listen. Later, they tried to have me fired. Whatever).

Reading through the .pdf, it becomes clear that Whatcott's anti-gay pamphlets, which he was distributing door-to-door (in Edmonton, I believe), bore FreeD's URL; in other words, from Whatcott's pamphlet's you would reasonably conclude that Free-Dominion was his website, a fact the Fourniers had no knowledge of (and something Whatcott did not see fit to tell them). So when the CHRC decided to proceed against Whatcott's on-line activities, they naturally turned on FreeD.

Interestingly enough, the gang at Free Dominion are still blaming the usual suspects for their troubles. Given their ideological commitments, I'm not sure they will ever be able to correctly perceive Whatcott's treachery.