Canada_______________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

The Hammer of Activists

Homosexual crusaders have used the courts to gain political advantages, thereby
circumventing the opposition of the people’s elected representatives.

By John-Henry Westen

While the United States remains in shock over the Vermont Supreme Court ruling that ordered state legislators to give equal legal status to homosexual unions, in Canada such rulings have become routine. In fact on April 11, the Canadian House of Commons passed legislation removing all legal distinction between married couples and cohabiting homosexuals. The law comes as a result of a string of undemocratic Supreme Court rulings mandating non-discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.”

Homosexual activists have learned that rather than hope to battle for special recognition from the electorate, they should attempt the less daunting task of using the unelected and unaccountable courts to enforce homosexual advancement. In the 1980s Canadian legislators—the elected representatives of the people—rejected the inclusion of “sexual orientation” as a prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, in 1995 the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the term “sexual orientation” to be “read in” to the Charter, putting sexual preference on par with inalienable characteristics such as race and sex. (However, the court’s 1995 decision maintained that pension benefits need not be given to homosexual partners, since marriage, due to its unique role in furthering society, deserved special privileges. That stance would soon change.)

On the provincial scene, the term “sexual orientation” crept into provincial human-rights codes, especially where liberal provincial governments reigned. Beginning as early as 1986 in Ontario, “sexual orientation” was entered into all provincial human-rights codes by 1998, and incorporated into the federal Human Rights Act of 1996. One province though, had resisted the trend. Alberta, traditionally the most conservative Canadian province, refused to include the term in its human rights code until ordered to do so by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Vriend decision of 1998.

Inroads on religious freedom

The Vriend ruling sent shock waves throughout Canada, not only for its undemocratic nature but also because the case struck at the heart of religious freedom in Canada. Delwin Vriend was an openly practicing homosexual and a teacher at a Christian school. In 1991 he was dismissed by King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta for flouting the college’s moral standards. Vriend was frustrated in his attempts to file a formal charge against the college for his dismissal, since the Alberta Human Rights Commission refused to hear his complaint, pointing out that sexual orientation was not covered under the province’s human rights code. Vriend challenged the commission’s decision in the courts. In 1998 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Alberta must include specific protection for homosexuals in the provincial code. The justices said that Alberta’s act would be interpreted to include gays and lesbians, even if the province did not formally amend it. Despite pressure to do so, the provincial premier refused to exercise his constitutional authority to challenge the court’s decision.

Although Vriend has not sought to regain his job at the Christian college, the ruling set a dangerous precedent. Dr. Guy Saffold, the executive vice-president of Trinity Western University in British Columbia, expressed concern about the implications of the Vriend decision. Saffold noted that discrimination against homosexuals “is considered legally no different from discrimination on the grounds of race or religion,” and thus “a for-profit business owner would probably not be able to refuse to hire someone on grounds of their homosexuality, or an apartment owner to rent a suite.”

Homosexual activists have made Saffold’s institution a special focus of their attacks. Trinity Western, which has an Evangelical Protestant affiliation, asks its students to sign a “community standards” agreement, which stipulates that they will refrain from extramarital sex—specifically including homosexual sex. Activists within the British Columbia College of Teachers, the board which handles accreditation to teachers in the province, have refused to give accreditation to Trinity Western’s teacher-training program, since it says that the school’s policy barring homosexual activity is discriminatory. The case was taken to court, and after years of litigation has arrived at the Supreme Court of Canada, which is scheduled to rule on the case sometime this year.

“Sexual orientation” inclusions in provincial human-rights codes have also been used to attack the Christian sentiments of many city mayors. In more than six cases, provincial human-rights tribunals have found mayors guilty of “discrimination” because they refused to make official proclamations of “gay pride week.” In Ontario alone, the mayors of London and Hamilton were fined $10,000 and $5,000 respectively for their “discrimination,” despite their testimony that their Christian faith prohibited them from issuing the proclamation. The court costs and fines for Mayor Dianne Haskett of London totaled more than $70,000. (Throughout this report, all dollar figures refer to Canadian currency.)

In another recent case, a Toronto-based Christian printer was fined for refusing to print pro-homosexual propaganda for an activist group. In a February 24 decision, the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered Scott Brockie, the owner of Imaging Excellence Inc., to pay the activist group Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives $5,000, and to print materials from homosexual organizations in the future. In a chilling ruling, the one-woman adjudicator rejected Brockie’s plea for “fundamental freedom of conscience and religion.” She wrote that Brockie “remains free to hold his religious beliefs and to practice them in his home.” However, she continued, “what he is not free to do, when he enters the public marketplace and offers services to the public in Ontario, is to practice those beliefs in a manner that discriminates against lesbians and gays.”

But Christians are not the only objects of homosexual legal attacks. In December 1998 the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in favor of a group of pro-homosexual teachers in their suit against the Surrey School Board. The board had passed a resolution to ban three books which had been slated for kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, on the grounds that the texts were designed to indoctrinate children with the notion that homosexual households are morally equivalent to normal families.

That court ruling is now under appeal.

Even popular notions of common decency have come under attack. Radical judges both in lower courts and in the British Columbia Supreme Court have struck down laws against the possession of child pornography. The Supreme Court of Canada will take up that case later this year.

Defense of marriage

The most recent legal offensive has been directed at the institution of marriage. A Supreme Court of Canada decision in May 1999 ruled that Ontario’s Family Law Act discriminates against practicing homosexual couples by not allowing them to receive spousal benefits. In October, with the Supreme Court’s direction, the Ontario government passed omnibus legislation offering all the privileges of marriage—including the right to adopt children—to practicing homosexuals; only the term “marriage” was withheld. And on April 11 of this year, the federal government ignored a deluge of pleas from millions of concerned Canadians and followed Ontario’s lead, with legislation removing all legal distinction between married and homosexual couples.

While admittedly bleak, the state of affairs has brought some blessings. The attack on Christian morality has prompted evangelicals and Catholics to work together. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver have launched a joint appeal. And the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) announced in February that it had filed a motion with the Supreme Court of Canada to intervene in the case of Trinity Western University. In some of the strongest language it has ever used, the CCCB said the decision to deny accreditation is a “rejection of moral values based on religious belief; a direct attack on independent religious-based education; and an infringement of constitutionally protected rights of Trinity Western University and its students.”

Amidst the struggle, the voice of the Vicar of Christ has been reassuring. While dealing with Roman officials and addressing the European Union, the Holy Father has made public statements which applied with equal vigor to the unfolding Canadian situation. In January of last year, while the Supreme Court was forcing Ontario to provide benefits to homosexual couples, the Pope said of homosexuality that “such union is to be opposed . . . above all because of the objective impossibility of being fruitful in the transmission of life, according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being.”

In June 1999, just months before the Ontario government passed a law to give homosexual couples all the rights of marriage, John Paul II said: “De facto unions between homosexuals represent a deplorable distortion of what should be the communion of love and life between man and woman in a reciprocal giving open to life.”

And finally in January of this year, as the federal government was preparing its own omnibus law to provide active homosexuals with marriage-like benefits the pope simply said (addressing Rome’s city officials) “I ask authorities to avoid any initiative which could favor or guarantee legal equality between the family and other forms of living together.”

Back to Catholic Information Center on Internet's Main Periodical Page

Back to Catholic World Report - June 2000 - Table of Contents