A Dime a Dozen Blog

I don’t fully understand the thought process of my opponents sometimes. Try as I might, I can’t see into Jason Cherniak’s head.

He has a post on his blog today calling for something that would in effect be a Tort of Group Libel, available no doubt only to officially sanctioned religious groups, and overseen by the Human Rights Commissions. He would be for creating a new speech code in which religious people enjoyed special protections not shared by other belief groups.

If you were found to have violated this new speech code, then the government as mediator could command you to give equal space in your publication to the group you had ‘wronged’. The government would be in a position to rule on whether a reply was sufficient and intelligent enough. If it weren’t then there would likely be further sanctions.

I can’t see how that would be a good thing.

Which religions are protected and which aren’t? Which of their beliefs are sacrosanct and worthy of speech code protections and which aren’t?

Some examples:

• Some Jews practice circumcision by sucking the ruined foreskin off of the baby’s penis.
• In Bountiful, BC the Mormon faith is practiced in a way so as to allow for polygamy.
• In southwest BC, believers in native religions sometimes use force to initiate new adherents.

Cherniak says: “I believe that you should not be allowed to attack people in writing on the basis of their religion.”

Say a Mr. X practices that particular form of the Jewish faith that commands him to suck an infant’s penis. Were I to write that Mr. X was a vile pedophile because of his religion, then would I be in violation of this speech code and forced by the state to give over my blog to the aforementioned pedophile?

Say a Mr. Y practices that particular native belief that allows for the use of force. Can I call him a thug and a brute for supporting it? Or again, have I violated a speech code and must submit to punishment?

I suspect that Cherniak would say that these are matters for the Human Rights Commissions – but really, are they? Is it safe to allow a government to decide which religious practices are appropriate and worthy and which are not? If I were Mr. X and found that a part of my faith was not deemed worthy of protection by the HRCs than I would rightly feel discriminated against.

And what of me and my fellow atheists? Do we enjoy protection for our non-belief? I am offended any time a publication says that God makes people good. It’s saying that I am a moral inferior and it is exposing me to contempt. Am I protected? My non-belief is no more or less a choice than Mr. X’s Judaism.

And if my non-belief is protected, what then of my political beliefs? If someone says Conservatives are bad people, aren’t they discriminating against me, heaping scorn on me? Why is a person’s chosen faith more deserving of protection than my non-belief or my political convictions?

To manage such a Tort, a government would necessarily need to involve itself in overseeing the beliefs and practices of Canada’s religious groups and their adherents. It would necessarily need to approve of some practices and abjure others. It would mean a commission composed of the believers of one faith would be deciding on the just practices of another faith.

Such a law doesn’t just endanger free speech, it knocks down the walls between church and state, endangers the free practice of religion, and exposes the believers in unprotected religions to state-sanctioned hatred and contempt.

It’s a monstrously stupid, discriminatory and dangerous idea.