Thursday, June 26, 2008

A "Human Rights" Complaint Over A Bad Joke

No, it's not a joke. A Toronto comedian Guy Earle has got a key role in a tragicomical farce named "human rights in Canada".
A Canadian stand-up comedian will face a human rights tribunal hearing after a woman complained she and her friends faced a "tirade of homophobic and sexist comments" while attending one of his shows.

In a decision released this week, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled there is enough evidence to hear the case of Vancouver woman Lorna Pardy against Toronto comedian Guy Earle. Zesty's Restaurant in Vancouver, where the May 22, 2007, show took place, was also named in the complaint. The restaurant has since closed.

Pardy could not be reached Wednesday for comment. However, the tribunal's decision says she alleges she was discriminated against over her sex and sexual orientation when Earle made public comments "intended to humiliate her." The ruling says Earle and Pardy "have very different versions of who was to blame for the incidents, how it came about and how it escalated." There is also a dispute over what role alcohol played in the incident.
...
Reached Wednesday, Earle said he was the show's MC when Pardy and two of her friends walked in, sat in the booth closest to the stage and began heckling him and other comics.

"Two of them started making out, flipping me the bird and saying I hated lesbians," he said.
Somehow this whole story doesn't look like a typical discrimination scenario when a person is greeted with the sign saying "no dogs or {people of your kind} allowed". Neither does it look like a situation when the "undesirable" person is allowed in, yet has to face insults and humiliating jokes until he has no choice but to leave the place.

Could it be that Pardy and her perverse "girlfriends" provoked Guy Earle's sarcastic remarks with their heckling? After all, it's not the first time when militant homosexuals attend an event with a sole intention to disrupt and then - pretend to be the victims. The restaurant in which the ill-fated performance took place (and which was also named in the complaint) is no longer in business. Is this a mere coincidence?

Most of the people who commented on the news release, seem to have no illusions about those "human rights" complaints and the quasi-judiciary tribunals with a 100% conviction rate that process them. But Guy Earle has already admitted that he used comments which he now regrets. In the eyes of the star chamber commissars that means nothing but conceding defeat. Too bad Guy Earle chose to give up rather than using his wit and sarcasm against the freedom-snatching commissions.

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