Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Unfree Speech in Canada

Canadian conservative blogger Ezra Levant has been hit with what here in the States would call a SLAPP suit by “Richard Warman, Canada’s most prolific – and profitable – user of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.”

It’s about political censorship, the abuse of government power, and the freedom of the blogosphere. Warman wants to marginalize and perhaps even criminalize conservative ideas. Well, I want to denormalize the human rights commissions. It’s going to be a helluva fight – and an excellent opportunity to showcase the abusive, corrupt, bullying, censorious nature of the CHRCs and their star pupil, Richard Warman.

I don’t even think the importance of this fight is limited to Canada. The creeping censorship that Warman embodies is of the same breed as the censorship that Geert Wilders faces for his film, Fitna. It’s part of a global attempt to squelch ideas about liberty and other western values. It’s part of an unholy alliance between domestic leftists and foreign jihadis.

Consider donating to Levant’s legal defense fund. Let’s fight them over there in hopes that we won’t have to fight them here.

Update: Never mind, the same sort of left-wing censorship is already here. case in point, from Eugene Volokh:

Elaine Huguenin co-owns Elane Photography with her husband. The bulk of Elane’s work is done by Elaine, though she subcontracts some of the work some of the time. Elane refused to photograph Vanessa Willock’s same-sex commitment ceremonies, and just today the New Mexico Human Rights Commission held that this violated state antidiscrimination law. Elane has been ordered to pay over $6600 in attorney’s fees and costs.

I haven’t seen any written statement of reasons, but the order must implicitly rest on two interpretations of state law: (1) This sort of photography company constitutes a “public accommodation,” defined by state law “any establishment that provides or offers its services, facilities, accommodations or goods to the public, but does not include a bona fide private club or other place or establishment that is by its nature and use distinctly private.” (2) A refusal to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony constitutes sexual orientation discrimination, which New Mexico law forbids. These may or may not be sensible interpretations of the statutory text. But the result seems to me to likely violate the First Amendment (though there’s no precedent precisely on point).

And, it appears, political indoctrination remains rife on US campuses.