Bill Whatcott, Canada’s most strangely obsessed anti-gay activist, will soon be the subject of quizzical contemplation by Canada’s highest court.

Whatcott was fined nearly a decade ago after distributing hateful, anti-gay fliers in Saskatchewan, but won an appeals court ruling in February on the grounds that distributing fliers is part of his freedom of expression.

The fliers really weren’t very nice. “Our children,” one pamphlet reads in part, “will pay the price in disease, death, abuse and ultimately eternal judgement if we do not say no to the sodmoite desire to socialize your children into accepting something that is clearly wrong.”

“Sodomites,” another read, “are 430 times more likely to acquire AIDS and three times more likely to sexually abuse children.”

It should go without saying that all the pamphlets were really, really, really wrong—factually and morally. So, unhappy with the appeals court ruling, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Comission asked the Supreme Court to visit the case, and they agreed.

Now, having the same level of legal understanding as… let’s say a massive, multinational corporation, I remain utterly clueless as to what the Supreme Court will find. Personally, I feel that freedom of expression is an important right, but I don’t think that necessarily means you can go around making all sorts of wacky, unfounded accusations that gay people are bringing about the children apocalypse. Sounds a lot like slandering an entire minority to me, and I hope that’s what Canada’s provisions against inciting hatred are meant to prohibit.

One thing’s pretty clear to me, though. This guy is gay-obsessed. I mean, I’m actually gay and I still don’t have as much gay-on-the-brain as this guy. Off the top of my head: In addition to crafting and distributing hysterically nutty pamphlets, Whatcott once lead Regina’s Gay Pride parade with anti-gay signage, picketted outside private Planned Parenthood clinics declaring the workers there to be “disseminators of AIDS,” and even ran for mayor of Edmonton with a completely anti-gay platform. “As your mayor,” his official platform opened, “Bill Whatcott is committed to protecting Edmontonians from homofascism.”

Right. Well, here’s hoping the Supreme Court will protect us from whatcottcrazyism!

• Supreme Court to hear anti-gay activist’s case [CBC News]

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.)

• Yellowknife landlord says he tore up gay couple’s lease over fear of God [Winnipeg Free Press]
• Gay couple left in cold by landlord [CBC News]

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!

• Sask. Appeal Court overturns human rights ruling against anti-gay activist [Winnipeg Free Press]
• Sask court upholds free speech in anti-gay flyer decision [Xtra]

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.

• Gay tenants win B.C. Human Rights Tribunal complaint [Straight.com]

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 activist’s complaint dismissed [Xtra]

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!

• Commissioner who refused to marry same-sex couple loses appeal [CBC News]