Scared into silence? That’s the idea, anyway

But it’s not working in Alberta. The Red Deer Advocate was a small community publication serving its local citizens in all the ways good local papers do.

But in recent years this small-town paper has been receiving international attention, after Christian pastor Steve Boissoin was hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for publishing a letter criticizing the homosexualist activist agenda in the Advocate.

And now the Red Deer Advocate is joining the increasingly vocal and passionate contingent of Canadians who say they have had enough of the human rights commissions.

Human rights, eh?

It was widely reported in the media that several weeks ago the AHRC handed down a “remedy” ruling to Steve Boissoin, ordering the pastor to pay $7,000 in fines, to desist from ever again making “disparaging” remarks about homosexuals or homosexuality, and, lastly, to apologize to Darren Lund, the complainant in the case, in a letter, to be published in the same publication that Boissoin’s original letter appeared in – the Red Deer Advocate…

In a recent op-ed, managing editor Joe McLaughlin, speaking on behalf of the Advocate, expressed his paper’s disgust with the AHRC’s decision in the Boissoin case, and in particular with the commission’s decision to order his paper to publish a coerced apology letter.

Read the piece. Sounds like Boissoin’s original letter was written with compassion and also expressed the pastor’s moral conviction about the gay agenda. Don’t the editorial pages serve as a forum to exchange ideas? Depends on the ideas, with the establishment of the thought police.

As a result of the Boissoin decision, concludes McLaughlin, “The rights of Albertans to publicly express views that they honestly believe are being constrained not by criminal law, but by fear of being hauled before a rights commission and the certainty of accumulating massive legal bills to defend themselves. More egregiously, the rights commission not only wants to censure hateful speech (a laudable goal), but to pre-emptively deny some Albertans the right to express their legitimate views on certain topics.”

Which, yet again, reveals how intolerant the ‘tolerance’ crowd is.