Human Rights Potpourri: Guy Earle Wants To Play Martyr On The Cheap; Boisson Ruling Appealed

So comedian Guy Earle instructed his lawyer to walk out on his BCHRT hearing in Vancouver yesterday, claiming "abuse of process". I guess that's one way to keep your legal fees down. However, it left testimony like this go (because Ms. Pardy was cross-examined by a non-lawyer) unchallenged:

Did Guy Earle get upset because you kissed your friend, she was asked. She said she thought this was not right though she didn't know what Earle was thinking. Her girlfriend had simply kissed her on her cheek because she was glad to see her out as this was not a common occurrence. They were not trying to make a scene (as previously reported by Earle).

She said she thought Earle thought they were causing a disturbance when they were talking to two waitresses about their patio bill.


[...]

They had spent the time listening to another comedy act, a short set, and talking to comedians. [Lorna Pardy] went to the bathroom to gather herself, and on the way back Earle at the bar physically assaulted her. (I assume this was a reference to Earle snatching her glasses and smashing them.) Her party were in shock and stayed because they couldn't get up from the table. They left around 11.30.

I don't know. It seems a bit of a stretch to argue that this behavior would have been a legitimate part of Guy Earle's "comedy" act.

On a somewhat related note: in December Stephen Boisson won the court challenge of his
conviction by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal for hateful messaging directed at gays. Now, Darren Lund, the University of Calgary professor who brought the original HRC complaint, is appealing that decision. Not much in the way of detail yet, but if you scroll down through the FreeD comments you will see that Mr. Boisson has confirmed.

Alberta's Section 3 Constitutional; Boisson Acquitted

The full ruling can be found here.

1) Stephen Boisson's language was found to be relatively mild compared to the kind of messages employed to set the hate-speech standard.

2) It was noted that the case was about a single letter, not an extended sequence of hate-speech messages:

...which is odd, because I was under the impression that the letter was republished several times afterwards, perhaps on the Concerned Christians website.

3) The kicker seems to be that the assault on a gay youth--which supposedly came about as a result of the letter, and was committed by (among others) an associate of Mr. Boisson who had been exposed repeatedly to the contents of the letter--is treated as alleged, and the evidence drawn from its circumstances as here say. I was under the impression from the original HRC case that none of this (other than the implications for Mr. Boisson's case) was in doubt.

4) In any case, the judge found that the law was misapplied in Boisson's case, and not that it was invalid. A reference was made to the Lemire constitutional challenge, about which the judge wrote

So obviously that case won't serve as anyone's anti-HRC silver bullet.

Meet Salman Hossain, Poster Boy For Section 13

From The NP:

A Toronto man who had posted messages on the Internet supporting terrorist attacks in Canada and the deportation of Jews will not face criminal charges, police said on Monday.

The CJC is not happy, and has asked that the

Ministry of the Attorney General to conduct a review of statements alleged to have been made by Salman Hossain to determine if charges should be laid under section 319(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada.

They are also asking for a meeting with the AG himself (Chris Bentley) so that they might "discuss this matter in greater detail".

Interesting to see what transpires. Human Rights activists like Warman and (I believe) Abrams have long complained about the difficulty in getting charges laid under the criminal code, and argued that the HRC/HRT apparatus plays an important role of catching stuff that probably meets the cc requirement but which, for whatever reason, the police/AG combination have chosen not to pursue.

Mr. Hossain's writings would be a perfect occasion for a section 13 complaint, and we'll see if the CJC makes any moves in that direction in the coming few months, should all else fail.

Just as an aside, Dawg has a good post on similar topics from last night. I'm feeling lazy today, and in any case I might do a post on Stephen Boisson at a later date, so I'll just note that I reject Dawg's equating the writings of Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus Al-Hayiti with those of Stephen Boisson. I've given these reasons before, but here they are again:

I am unimpressed by the latest CHRC "scandal", and particularly unimpressed by the comparison of Mr. Al-Hayiti's book (L’Islam ou l’Intégrisme?), which the CHRC argued did not meet the Section 13 standard, to the writings of Stephen Boisson, which were judged to have met that standard. Most of my arguments get hashed out in the comments (ignore NAMBLA-Dick) here, but the short version is that Boisson's letter to the Red Deer Advocate triggered a real incident of gay bashing by one of Mr. Boisson's associates, and it is pretty easy to interpret his letter in context as a concrete call to action against the local homosexual community (as opposed to Mr. Al-Hayiti's book, in which the offensive language is rather vague).

Incidentally, at the time I was able to contact Mr. Al-Hayiti, and he wrote back to me:

Maybe the complaint should have been against the Qor'an, the Word of God! Or maybe even against the bible also! Do you think the commission should censor God? Everything I said in my book is from the revelation, not from me! I have nothing else to say.Thank you!

...which didn't impress me at the time, but now seems to bear out the argument made in Dawg's comments that Al-Hayiti is describing what the Qor'an says about, for example, gays--that they shall be punished by Allah, at some point--not demanding that people should run out and start beheading them. Still offensive, sure. But missing several of the properties that give something up to the S13 standard.

Lorne Gunter On Freedom Of Speech

...for Stephen Boisson, the nutty X-youth pastor whose famous gay-bashing letter to the Red Deer Advocate was causally linked to the beating of a gay youth:

Still, anyone truly interested in freedom of speech must defend Boissoin against the forces of state coercion and political correctness aligned against him.

...for Larry Hill and other members of the Canadian Wheat Board, who have been, as it turns out, illegally muzzled by the Canadian Government for publicly defending its single desk selling system.

The Wheat Board should remain silent

Nuff said.