Just so it’s clear…
Mark Steyn links to an article that explains, in brief, the full implications of what a “guilty” ruling by either of the human rights commissions that Maclean’s magazine has yet to face:
Take a look at s. 37(2) of the BC Human Rights Code, where it says:(2)If the member or panel determines that the complaint is justified, the member or panel
(a) must order the person that contravened this Code to cease the contravention and to refrain from committing the same or a similar contravention,That is a mandatory injunction. An obligatory ‘cease and desist’ order. If the complainants win, the Tribunal has to order Maclean’s to stop running ‘Islamophobic’ articles. Not just articles by Mark Steyn, mind you; they have to stop running those articles period. Goodbye Barbara Amiel. Now, you might respond that Steyn wouldn’t be silenced, he would just have to pick his words more carefully. But think about it; the CIC is not just complaining about the excerpt from America Alone, but about a whole sheaf of Steyn’s articles. It’s pretty safe to assume that whatever Steyn has written about Islam in the last seven or so years would be considered offensive by the CIC. In the face of an injunction, then, he would either have to stop writing about Islam or stop obeying the dictates of his conscience as a writer.
The students may say they don’t want to silence Mark Steyn or anyone else. Their complaint, if successful, will do just that. It can do no other.
Just so. I’ve tried to make that point in interviews. The BC tribunal’s ruling will mean that I can no longer write for Maclean’s, and that Maclean’s itself will be highly circumscribed in what it can publish about the relationship between Islam and the west. In other words, on one of the central questions facing the world today, the editorial decisions of Canada’s largest news weekly will be determined by a British Columbia “court”.
My career in Canada will be formally ended next month.
These human rights complaints — in fact, virtually every human rights complaint filed under section 13 of human rights law in Canada (and its provincial equivalents) — are about censorship, and nothing more. They can have no other outcome (and given the nearly 100% conviction rate of the HRCs, one could almost surely say that they will have no other outcome).
And in this great debate, that’s the line in the sand, on one (and only one) side of which each of us must fall. Either we oppose censorship in any and every circumstance, or we acknowledge that it is sometimes/often/commonly necessary. If we place ourselves with the former camp, we are on the side of freedom (which, unfortunately but necessarily, we must share with some less-than-savoury characters; but who said freedom was free from being, occasionally, ugly?). If we place ourselves with the latter camp, we abdicate any and all moral authority with which to complain, in the future, should someone else end up facing the prospect of being legally silenced by the CHRC or one of its provincial parallels.
Perhaps it will be a rock star whose music is much loved. Perhaps it will be, as someone else I read this morning suggested, a public figure such as David Suzuki. Whomever it is, let it be understood that the power of the HRCs, and their continued corruption and abuse of power, will not end when the Mark Steyns, Marc Lemires, and Ezra Levants of the world have been duly dispatched — the field of targets will not have been narrowed then; it will only find need to shift leftward.
Update: Welcome, Steynians!
Steynianism 137 « Free Mark Steyn! (May 12, 2008, 1:28 pm).
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