First, he managed to persuade the editors over at National Post to publish another of his anti-gay screeds. His reasoning on SGM is so pathetically poor it's not even worth my time to dissect it.
Second, he opened his yap on the Bill C-484 issues, and he makes the most amazing leap of illogic, claiming that there is some equivalency between C-10 and various human rights commission complaints.
I can't pretend to be a regular viewer of the television show Kink. ... There also are some quality products that are given a tax credit, but the point about the government's proposed C-10 legislation is that it doesn't threaten anything that's any good. Only cheap trash watched by a handful of people who should really fund their pornography through their own pockets.
Screech. Halt. All Stop.
I don't like the example Coren puts forth any more than he does. But then again, what I've seen of "evangelical television" doesn't exactly grab my interest either - in fact I find it just about as offensive for different reasons. But then, that plays into my point. Coren's whining about his right not to be offended, and demanding that his morality be imposed by ministerial fiat with NO review process, no process whatsoever other than the opinion of the minister of the day and whoever happens to have the minister's ear.
Really? They should, then, be campaigning for magazines such as Maclean's and Catholic Insight, websites like Free Dominion and Five Feet of Fury and a whole bunch of journalists who are currently under attack by numerous federal and provincial Human Rights Commissions for indulging in genuine freedom of speech without any fatties in latex or government handouts.
"Genuine freedom of speech"? Just what is that really, Michael? Your right to spout anti-GLBT lies with impunity? Your right to marginalize others for offending your moral code?
Of course, he's whining about HRC's underneath it all. However, the HRC's - even Alberta's - have a process that is clear, documented and publicly visible. (In spite of what Coren, Levant and others may claim) More to the point, only a small percentage of complaints actually go much beyond initial investigation. For the most part, the opinions of the minister responsible seldom come into the picture - any more than they do in other matters of law.
Second, there's a massive difference between someone's art being offensive to others, and a discrete attempt to marginalize members of society for offending Mr. Coren's particular sensibilities.
Allow me to illustrate by example. I do not like evangelical television - for a variety of reasons I find it deeply off-putting. The solution is simple - I don't watch it. I am not asking that it have whatever government funding it receives pulled, nor do I care if it does receive some funding. I don't partake in it, and frankly I have no interest in doing so.
The other side of the coin comes when people like Coren open their fatuous mouths and demand that GLBT people be treated as second class citizens (with the full burden of paying all of the taxes anyhow, I might add). The difference is that GLBT people offend Mr. Coren's sensibilities, and therefore he demands marginalization - not merely socially (which happens already), but in law. Making it harder for someone to get a job or to live their lives in peace is quite different from funding for the arts.
Step back from this for a minute or ten, and it becomes quite clear what the difference is. In one case, there is a process that is public and known to weigh the balance of competing rights; in the other we grant to the political minister of the day the arbitrary right to change the rules on a whim - largely on the basis of whether or not they are "offended" by something.
It always fascinates me how the first people to cry censorship when conservatives merely suggest a level playing field are just the sort of people who write letters to newspapers calling for people like, well, like me, to be fired.
That's a level playing field, Michael? No it isn't - in fact, there's no equivalence. I have a right to ignore art that offends my sensibilities - which I exercise on a daily basis; on the other hand, I have no right to demand that (for example) evangelical art be denied funding because it offends me.
Granting ministerial fiat rights in matters of "public morality" is extremely dangerous, especially if there is no process for review, input or otherwise besides the lobby system. Even the quasi-judicial HRC model works better than that.
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