Being fortunate enough to live in a liberal democracy such as Canada, we tend to take democratic freedoms such as freedom of speech for granted.
Sure, we think we understand what that right means; in Canada we are free to say what we want about what we want. However, there is a caveat to that - we are free to say what we want within reason. And that is where it gets a bit complicated and a little tricky.
Whenever someone writes or says something we find offensive, prejudiced or hateful, reactions (as opposed to reasoned response) kick in. In a liberal democracy which holds up freedom of speech as a beacon, what is supposed to happen when a hateful piece of crap is put out into the public sphere is, those who disagree or take exception to it, respond with arguments that will show it to be the crap it actually is. However, we are all human and humans get emotional and instead of "responding" we have a tendency to "react" and seek ways to shut the person up instead.
Such was the case a few years ago when a Red Deer pastor and youth advocate wrote a particularly nasty letter to the editor, decrying ‘gay affirmative action’ in the public school system. Stephen Boissoin’s June 17, 2002 letter went beyond simply arguing against such initiatives and veered into some pretty fetid waters. Boissoin was then the chairperson of the Concerned Christian Coalition, a rightwing group vehemently opposed to GLBTQ rights and which viewed homosexuality as an abomination and evil. The rhetoric used by the CCC was, shall we say, often inflammatory as was the rhetoric used by Boissoin in his letter to the editor. I happen to believe any reasonable individual would have found the letter offensive, even if that person wasn’t GLBTQ themselves.
A University of Calgary professor, Darren Lund, was such a person.
Professor Lund launched a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission. This is where it gets interesting. While Lund launched a counter attack against what he saw as ‘hate’ and sought out the support of the GLBTQ community, and specifically Egale Canada’s, what he found instead was Egale Canada opposing his complaint to the AHRCC.
I was the co-chair of the Prairies, NWT and Nunavut Region with Egale at that time. I, too, experienced a visceral reaction to Boissoin’s letter and immediately brought it to the attention of the Board. Others on the Board of Egale believed the way to go with this was to come down on the side of freedom of speech and to, in fact, allow Boissoin to express his views without the threat of someone launching a human rights complaint against him for doing so. It was not an easy position for the national queer advocacy group to take, I can assure you, and was met with a firestorm of condemnation and shock by many within the membership of Egale and the community in general. Certainly, I suspect, by Professor Lund.
Despite the lack of support from Egale, Lund continued his fight against what he saw as hate speech and did so for 11 years. Lund won at the Commission level back then and Boissoin was substantially fined and slapped with a lifelong ban on publicly stating anything derogatory or critical of the GLBTQ community.
As outraged as I personally was over Boissoin’s views, and as much as I argued in favour of some sort of accountability, I also believe a human rights commission issuing a lifelong ban against someone expressing his or her views, however repugnant I happen to find them, to be draconian and actually scarier than the expression of those views were to begin with. What if - and there was a time, not so long ago, when this was the case - it had been one of us who had been silenced? What if while arguing for equality and fairness and criticizing those who opposed us, we had a human rights complaint made against us for our criticism of, for instance, conservative Christian values, forced to make a ‘donation’ to those we opposed, and then on top of all that, forbidden to ever express our views for the rest of our lives? The...rest...of...our...lives.... That, right there, is outrageous and something almost Orwellian.
I make no excuses for individuals like Boissoin or his cohorts in the Concerned Christian Coalition. I find their views and tactics reprehensible and spent many years of my own life fighting against them. But even at that, I find what came out of the whole Boissoin situation to be wrong. Yes, he should have been called to account. Yes, he should have been challenged. I didn’t, and still don’t, have an issue with a complaint being laid with the Commission - that’s what it’s there for. I do, however, have an issue with the degree to which it was carried. It borders on persecution of an individual whose views we disagree with, and that is wrong.
Lund’s case against Boissoin moved out of the realm of the Commission and into the courts. Perhaps that was where it belonged in the first place, I don’t know. Lund has now lost at the Alberta Court of Appeals level, where his complaint against Boissoin was dismissed in October.
In 2009, Justice Earl Wilson of the Court of Queen’s Bench ruled the letter may have been "bewildering, puerile, nonsensical and insulting", but did not in his view violate Alberta’s human rights legislation and did not expose lesbians and gay men to hatred or contempt as Lund contended. Lund had the right to appeal that ruling, and did so. Such appeals are always a gamble and he lost.
Lund is now contemplating, along with his legal team, taking the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, which is the only legal option left following the Court of Appeals ruling. Lund believes the ruling "allows free reign to hate-mongers" and marks "a terrible day for the protection of basic rights" in Alberta.
I believe he has a point. It’s a lot more honest a point than Boissoin’s apologists on the right who have couched this in terms of Boissoin being silenced by a ‘kangaroo court’ with no judicial power but, who then only quote the more innocuous elements of his vitriolic letter. Though I think the point has been made. The name ‘Stephen Boissoin’ is now synonymous, as was Keegstra’s in an earlier era, with bigotry and pure unadulterated willful ignorance. Lund, and us for that matter, have our pound of flesh. The Court of Appeals ruling may appear to vindicate Boissoin but if it does so, it does so only on a fine legal point; a point lost on most people. No matter what the judge’s decision was in this latest installment of the saga, Boissoin’s reputation is forever linked to being an anti-gay hatemonger with wacky views.
As Laurie Aaron, a long-time Egale Board member, said at the time - and I paraphrase - better to expose such views to the cleansing light of day, and have them heard and argued against, than silenced and sent underground. Even at the time when all I wanted to do as an individual and as a director of Egale was to shut Boissoin the hell up and make him go away, I had to agree with Aaron.
Obscenities such as the Boissoin letter do need to be seen and to be seen for what they truly are; not opinion, and certainly not informed albeit unpopular opinion, but as the rants of a fringe element - and the way to combat such rants is by reasoned and thoughtful counter-argument, not censorship.
The risk in that, it can of course be argued, is it perpetuates the lies and misrepresentations and gives them a life they do not deserve. Fair enough. But at the end of the day, what has 11 years of litigation done? Kept the issue - and the lies - alive when they would have otherwise faded into the fetid darkness from whence they came years ago.
Voltaire once wrote that he may disagree with what another says, but he would defend to the death that individual’s right to say it. And that was in the 18th Century during the French Revolution, a very dangerous time to speak one’s mind. You could literally lose your head for doing so.
In the West, we no longer cut off people’s heads for expressing unwelcome views. Nor should we silence them, either...as tempting as that may be, for there lies the way to anarchy.