OK, kiddo! Here are all the fantastically amazing posts tagged with Human Rights Commission

Religious Freedom Doesn’t Give You That Power

June 25th, 2010

A man riding a giraffe shoots octopi at pedestrians, shouting 'Stand aside, for I have religious freedom!'

Will Goertzen, a landlord in Yellowknife, signed a one-year apartment lease for a young gay couple last year. Three weeks before the couple was set to move in, Goertzen discovered they were gay. He re-listed the property without notifying the couple, rented it to a different family, stole the couple’s $1,150 damage deposit, and left them for homeless.

Scott Robertson and Richard Anthony had to stay with various friends and keep all of their belongings scattered about different locations until they secured a new apartment. They got their damage deposit back only after taking Goertzen to rental court. Now the case is before the Northwest Territories Human Rights Commission.

Astonishingly, Goertzen is outright admitting that he denied housing, stole the damage deposit, and left the couple homeless because they were gay, saying that he recognizes the “supremacy of God over the Charter or Rights and Freedoms.”  ”[Homosexuality] isn’t natural and it’s a crime against nature,” Goertzen told an adjudicator at a human rights commission last week, “I can definitely not have a part in it.”

Religious freedoms exist in Canada, but all that means is that the government cannot dictate which deity or deities you are allowed to worship; it does not—and has never—granted the power to circumvent Canada’s laws or our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Both of which, indeed, explicitly forbid housing discrimination based on sexual orientation).

I’m not surprised some people are under a different impression, mind you. Saskatchewan has proposed a law that lets civil marriage commissioners refuse their public services for gay couples, and Alberta has just enacted a law that forces teachers to halt any discussions of sexual orientation until they receive parental permission from each parent, lest it offend their personal religious beliefs. Religious freedom is fast becoming a convenient carte blanche; a way to eschew personal responsibility, ignore or erase the rights of gay people, and nullify Canada’s guarantees of equality. Goertzen’s despicable behaviour is just a natural extension of this.

It’s time for mainstream religious people who realize that what Goertzen has done is wrong both in the legal and moral sense to stand up and say this is not acceptable.

Or, if this whole thing turns out differently, I could just start a religion of my own…

(Huge hat tip goes to Jason over at The Gay White North for the story.)

Anti-Gay Crusader Wins Court Challenge

March 1st, 2010

Bill Whatcott, Canada’s most hysterically obsessed anti-gay activist, does not have to pay $17,500 in fines after successfully challenging a Human Rights Tribunal ruling in Saskatchewan.

Whatcott was fined in 2005 over a “clear pattern or practice of disregard for protected rights,” sparked largely over some insane, anti-gay fliers.

The ruling was upheld by the Court of the Queen’s Bench in 2007, but the appeals court overturned the ruling, saying that the fliers didn’t violate Canada’s hate speech laws by inciting hatred and violence, and were therefore protected by freedom of expression.

Hey, I guess that means the Bill Whatcott flier collection fundraising effort for GLBT organisations is still on!

Landlord Fined For Abusing Gay Tenants

January 15th, 2010

Edmund Bro and Keith Scott, two gay, physically disabled, HIV-positive tenants in West Vancouver, have won their case with the Human Rights Tribunal over an abusive and homophobic landlord. Each tenant was awarded $15,000 to compensate for their year-and-a-half of relentless harassment from Michael John Moody and his son, Guy.

The Human Rights Code in British Columbia forbids, among other things, discrimination based on disability, sexual orientation, and source of income. Moody, being the sampling type it appears, decided to violate as many of these as possible. In addition to constant verbal harassment, he physically assaulted the two disabled men, demeaned their reliance on disability benefits, and even refused to conduct repairs on the property.

Bro and Scott moved out, of course, leaving Moody free to rebuild his property as a summer spot for anti-gay lobbyists.

Anti-Gay Lobbyist Loses Ridiculous Complaint

August 5th, 2009

Can this even be called martyrdom?

Kari Simpson, an anti-gay lobbyist, has lost her Human Rights Complaint against the B.C. Education Ministry, which she claimed had not done enough to help schoolchildren who “suffer from homosexuality and other dysfunctional sexual orientations.”

The amusingly dumb complaint argued that B.C. schools were actively denying students access to “sexual re-orientation therapies.”

No such students joined in on her class-action complaint.

The reparative conversion therapy that Kari refers to, incidentally, has been discredited and condemned by the entire professional medical community, denounced as being actively harmful to healthy development of individuals. Organisations that have gone on record to oppose the ineffective practise include The American Psychological Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Medical Association, The American Counselling Association, The American Psychiatric Association, among several others.

When I first wrote about Kari’s complaint in March, I said that she likely knew all of this and intended to lose her own complaint, setting herself up for a ridiculous form of martyrdom to a tiny, but obsessive audience of anti-gay activists. Sure enough, she wasted no time playing the victim card, announcing that the decision has laid “the groundwork for a case of systemic discrimination,” and that the Human Rights Commission “conveniently assisted” her to that effect.

Essentially, the complaint—in addition to wasting time and resources from people who have real human rights complaints to launch—was just a selfish attempt to leverage attention and spread the weak myth that gay people don’t exist; that they’re just dysfunctional straight people who need help escaping their sin.

It’s the same, failed strategy with these anti-gay lobbyists. Kari feels no need to stop and reflect on why no student covered by her class-action complaint enthusiastically joined the endeavour, because she knows that no such student exists. It’s all just pretend compassion, used for selfish, political ends.

Anti-Gay Marriage Commissioner Loses Case

July 29th, 2009

It's what Jesus would do.

Orville Nichols, a Saskatchewan civil marriage commissioner, has lost his anti-gay appeal of an earlier ruling by the provincial Human Rights Commission. Nichols was fined $2,500 in 2007 for refusing to perform his public services for a gay couple. He then fought the ruling in court, arguing that his private religious beliefs entitle him to discriminate and refuse public, non-religious services to gay people. A non-religious violation, if you will.

Civil marriage commissioners are licensed by the government to conduct marriage ceremonies for couples that do not wish to have a religious wedding. Since the ceremonies are secular and commissioners aren’t representatives of their private religious beliefs, they are subject to the same anti-discrimination laws as everyone else.

So, consequently, he lost his appeal… Not that he had much of it to begin with. Snap!

Alberta Puts The Chill On Gay Classroom Topics

June 3rd, 2009

In-flight movie: Return of the Killer Ironing Board

The Alberta legislature has passed a bill that requires teachers to receive parental permission before discussing or acknowledging topics of sexual orientation in the curriculum, or else face being brought before the Human Rights Commission for violating parental rights.

This means, very soon, teachers will be at risk of being brought before a tribunal if they acknowledge gay issues without first taking care to selectively evacuate students from the classroom. Not only does this send a terrible message to gay students—that topics about their lives pose such a profound hazard that their classmates’ attendance must be filtered based on privilege—but it enables and reinforces schoolyard bullying through that same knowledge.

So how did such a controversial bill pass so effortlessly? The wordsmithing employed by its supporters offers some clues. In the comments section of a National Post article I linked to on Friday, a supporter of the bill wrote: “The core issue here is who has the right to shape the minds of children, individuals or the State.” This simplification is a real eye-opener. Are those the only two options that supporters see? What about, say, the students being able to shape their own minds?

By the time students are old enough to be introduced to sexual education in the curriculum, they are citizens of their own right. For a guardian to forcibly bar a student from hearing information and viewpoints other than their own is not only narrow-minded, but irresponsible. Astonishingly, though, it seems bill proponents don’t view students as inquisitive minds that are capable of forming their own views; rather, they are seen as a form of human property for whom it is the exclusive right of the guardian to indoctrinate as they see fit. It is no wonder, then, that these parents see open classroom discussions and the analysis of opposing viewpoints as an affront to their plan—a way to undo the views they wish to force into their child, unchallenged via the careful censorship of information.

In this light, it actually begins to make sense that, since some parents wish to coercively inbue uncontested beliefs into their child, they project that same behaviour onto the state. Anti-bullying programs and lessons that include acknowledgement of gay persons, they think, must be part of some agenda to brainwash and take control of the younger generation. Why, I bet they even think my subliminal messages and short-wave thought injection gun are being used for more than just corporate advertising.

Still, what a sad day for education and enlightenment in Alberta.

Anti-Gay Lobby Urges Parents To File Against Teachers

May 25th, 2009

No "box" jokes, please.

One of Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby groups is seizing on Alberta’s Bill 44, a proposed amendment to the Human Rights Act that would disallow teachers from mentioning or discussing gay topics in front of students that did not receive parental permission.

The bill is ominously vague—a point which has piqued the interests of Brian Rushfelt, head of Canada Family Action Coalition. “It’s up to the parent to make [the legislation] as broad or narrow as they want,” he said, adding that neither “the schools nor the government should be the ones to put parameters on it and say it’s only sexuality classes or only evolution classes or only religion classes.”

Anti-gay lobby groups have been actively opposing measures to prevent the bullying of gay students for years, but now may have a new tool beyond the mere lobbying of school boards to get what they want.  Parents, according to Rushfeldt, should file human rights complaints against teachers who promote tolerance of gay students so that the boundaries of the new law can be broadened. Broadened, of course, in a means befitting only to those crazy enough to devote time to this nonsense.

This proposed abuse should be enough evidence for even supporters to reconsider the bill, but the real flaw lies within its intended uses. The effect of this legislation is to always postpone discussion of gay rights, student reports on gay historical figures and role models, anti-bullying campaigns, and sexual education information until all parents can be consulted. But parents who want their children to be able to actively examine different sides of issues as they arise, who wish for spontaneous discussion to be encouraged, whose lives—if they are gay—will now be treated as a topic so dangerous that all discussion of it must be halted until every student’s family gives their blessing to proceed, and who would have to see their child’s fellow classmates ushered out into the hallway when their family is up for discussion, would have no say in any of these matters if Bill 44 passes.

Although, come of think of it, this bill may have its uses, too. Why, I actually heard of a teacher once explaining that her name was changed to “Mrs. so-and-so” because she had just married her husband. Can you imagine? Flaunting her heterosexuality and the myriad bedroom implications it entails to the whole class! And don’t even get me started on lessons that contradict the teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Teachers Forced To Warn Parents Of Gay Material

May 1st, 2009

Sorry about that, Cheif.

Alberta is amending its Human Rights Act with a provision that will force school teachers to exclude any student whose parents object to the acknowledgement of sexual orientation in classroom discussions. Failure to pull a student from such a discussion—even ones that arise from student questions—could result in a human rights complaint.

This new provision is similar to Bill 208, a failed private member’s bill headed by Ted Morton, which would have forced teachers to issue warning slips to parents before discussing same-sex marriage in class.

What a novel idea, though! Barring students from hearing or discussing any information that parents disagree with. As if the Debate Club wasn’t uninteresting enough.

Anti-Gay Human Rights Complaint Is A Dud

March 20th, 2009

Aaabooga booga booga booga booga!

Kari Simpson, an anti-gay activist, has filed a complaint against the B.C. Education Ministry for not doing enough to help students who “suffer from homosexuality and other dysfunctional sexual orientations.”

The bizarre complaint goes on to allege that schools simply aren’t turning enough gay students straight. As Simpson puts it:

Sexual re-orientation therapies have helped thousands of individuals recover from such dysfunctional orientations. School counsellors are being denied the tools to be effective advocates for students in need of sexual re-orientation help and they should have access to resources and training that will equip them to properly counsel students.

Gee, that’s just awful. Think of all those thousands of poor, suffering gays that were denied their right to re-orientation by that callous school board.

Odd, though, don’t you think, that this human rights complaint had to be filed by a Christian activist instead of just one of those thousands of suffering students who were denied a gay cure. (Though, frankly, the only suffering I’ve ever endured as a gay person is from people like Kari.)

See, what Kari already knows—but chooses to ignore—is that all peer-reviewed research into reparative conversion therapy for gays has not only shown that it’s completely ineffective, but that it’s demonstrably harmful to one’s well-being. That’s why every respected medical and professional organisation has gone on record to condemn the very idea, including The American Psychological Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Medical Association, The American Counselling Association, The American Psychiatric Association, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

If I had to take a gander at it—which I don’t, but it’ll be fun—I’d say that Kari is filing the human rights complaint for two reasons. First, the Human Rights Commission has a history of protecting the rights of gays, and a small subset of religious activists feel it’s at their expense. By launching a destined-to-fail complaint she is setting herself up for some kind of hilarious martyrdom for a tiny, but delightfully obsessed group of nuts, which she can then use to further criticize the commission. Second, she gets a venue in which she can repeat the myth that there’s really no such thing as gay people to begin with: just straight people who need help escaping their sin.

Disingenuous compassion has been a failing strategy for these activists for years. This time won’t be any different. It’s just too bad that she has to waste valuable time from the people who have real human rights violations to report.

Alberta Still Dragging Feet On Gay Rights

February 23rd, 2009

No, I'm not on medication. Why do you ask?

Alberta is the only province in Canada that does not explicitly include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation in its human rights code. This, despite a ten-year-old Supreme Court ruling stating that provinces must not exclude gays and lesbians from their human rights legislations.

Rachel Notley, an Alberta MLA, has now brought the matter up in the legislature, calling out the government for its embarrassingly slow response to the court ruling. “Why,” she asked, “does the government continue to give a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to homophobes and gay-bashers by refusing to include sexual orientation in our human rights code?”

Great question, Rachel.

Just last year, Premier Ed Stelmach said that the human rights code would not be updated to include sexual orientation in that legislative session, calling the process “complicated.”  Now, Lindsay Blackett, the Minister responsible for the human rights code and the first black cabinet minister in Alberta, has said the same thing for this legislative session, announcing that updating the human rights code would be a “knee-jerk response:”

We do not make changes to legislation… or make amendments to any particular body just because of the whim of one particular individual in this House.

I guess avoiding a knee-jerk response justifies a plain ol’ jerk response. Isn’t politics just the classiest?

Here’s the thing: this issue is not just the wishes of one lone MLA—it’s the wishes of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Alberta has no excuse for letting this go unattended since 1999, when Rosie O’Donnell hosted the Grammys that debuted Ricky Martin—and only one of them was suspected of being gay.

So, yeah, if updating the human rights code is truly complicated and requires cascading updates, then say so—say unabashedly that it was a mistake to ignore it, that you’re on the case now, and that it will be in place soon. But, frankly, I don’t think it’s complicated, especially since the courts must already interpret the human rights code as if sexual orientation were present. Alberta has a long history of institutionalized homophobia by the government, and dragging their feet on updating the human rights code—while continuing to introduce homophobic legislation—gives me reason to suspect that they’re just being… What’s the most recognizable word for it?

Let’s say: “Alberta-governmenty.”

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