Sunday, June 8, 2008

You Don't Win The Argument By Silencing The Opponents

Alberta's freedom-snatching commission has recently handed down its ruling against a Christian pastor Rev. Stephen Boission. The reason for the complaint was a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, in which Rev. Boission argued against promoting homosexual lifestyle to children as young as five or six. There was "no direct victim who has come forward" - as admitted by Lori Andreachuk, the adjudicator in the case, formerly - a divorce lawyer. Yet the complainer (a homosexual activist which was in no way affected by the letter) was awarded $5000 and Rev. Stephen Boission was given the following order:
So what does it achieve? Does it somehow prove that what Rev. Boission said in his letter wasn't true? Does it somehow convince us that the complainer was right and that Rev. Boission was wrong? Of course not. All it achieved is silencing a man, courageous enough to share his concerns with others:
So, let's re-cap.

A Christian pastor has been given a lifetime ban against uttering anything "disparaging" about gays. Not against anything "hateful", let alone something legally defined as "hate speech". Just anything negative.

So a pastor cannot give a sermon.

But he must give a false sermon; he is positively ordered to renounce his deeply held religious beliefs, and apologize to his tormentor for having those views.

And then that pastor is ordered to declare to his entire city that he has renounced his religious views, even though he has not.
So that's the kind of "justice" you can expect from an organization which, in the best Orwellian traditions, has the words "human rights" in its name. The only purpose of the above ruling is to remind all of us that we have no rights to say anything that may offend a member of a designated victim group. But hurt feelings have nothing to do with seeking the truth and silencing the opponents doesn't win an argument. Sure, you can silence one man, you can scare thousands into silence, but you can't silence common sense:
So here goes. Marriage is between a man and a woman. If two homosexuals want to live together that is entirely up to them, but it is not and can never be a marriage.

World's still round

The state may say otherwise, but if the state suddenly decides that the world is flat, the world is still round. I will never, while there is breath in my body, regard a same-sex union as a marriage.

Gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children, whether they are part of what they think of as a marriage or not. If at all possible children should be raised by a mother and a father.

No comments: