SAULT STE. MARIE, Ontario — Organizers of a conservative online forum in Canada say their free-speech rights are under attack after they were notified that a complaint was filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
The complaint, filed by a private citizen and accepted for further investigation by the commission, protested a critical posting on the forum’s Web site regarding Islam and homosexuality.
The remarks appeared on FreeDominion.ca, a sister site to the conservative U.S. forum FreeRepublic.com, by Bill Whatcott, a former homosexual prostitute turned outspoken Christian activist.
“I can’t figure out why the homosexuals I ran into are on the side of the Muslims,” Mr. Whatcott wrote on the Web site. “After all, Muslims who practice Sharia law tend to advocate beheading homosexuals.”
He also attributed the worldwide Muslim fury at the Danish cartoons of Muhammad to “violence and discrimination inherent in Islamic theology.”
The complaint, which has not been made public, reportedly said the posting “has a discriminatory content against Muslims, and Free Dominion contributes to disseminating hate literature by allowing it to be on its Web site.”
A spokeswoman with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in Ottawa said the commission tries to conciliate between a complainant and the accused. Only if that fails is a tribunal set up to hear the case, she said.
As a matter of policy, the commission does not discuss cases before they reach the tribunal stage, which has not happened with the complaint against Free Dominion, said the spokeswoman, Carmen Gregoire.
If the case does reach adjudication, she said, the tribunal would be empowered under the Canadian Human Rights Act to order the Web site to “cease and desist” its publication of hate speech or to impose a monetary fine.
Canada’s 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the freedom of the press “and other media of communication … subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
In practice, however, Canadian hate-speech laws are more stringent than in the United States and outlaw some remarks that would be protected in the United States by the First Amendment.
Conservative bloggers across Canada have rallied to the defense of the Free Dominion organizers, who suspect they are being victimized for their conservative leanings.
“I cannot help but think that this is a politically motivated attack on our members’ free speech; the commission is behaving like Voldemort’s Death Eaters in the new Harry Potter book,” said forum co-founder Connie Wilkins.
“Whatever your political persuasion, you can’t possibly condone this attack on free expression by an unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy,” wrote Kathy Shaidle of Toronto, who denounced the complaint as a “secular fatwa” on her widely read RelapsedCatholic.com blog.
Mrs. Wilkins said she first learned of the matter last Wednesday when she received a letter from the commission asking for a response to the complaint. The letter was dated July 16.
She subsequently was told that a letter with details of the complaint had been sent earlier but apparently was missing. Only when Mrs. Wilkins’ attorney got involved did the commission agree to fax the details of the complaint, she said.
Mr. Whatcott has had other clashes with Canada’s human rights tribunal system. A tribunal in the western province of Saskatchewan fined him $17,500 in 2005 for distributing leaflets describing homosexual “marriage” as “sodomite marriage” and using graphic language to describe homosexual acts, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.