I See The "Persecuted Christian" Meme Is Alive and Well

Oh goody, I see that Lifesite has gotten onto its favourite hobby horse - the one with "Poor Persecuted Christian"(™) spray painted on the side.

There's two gems that come bubbling up on their "news" site from the last two days:

CHRC Spokesman Will Not Say if Christian Teaching on Sexuality is “Hate”

followed by

Saskatchewan Marriage Commissioner Fined For Refusing To "Marry" Homosexuals

Let's explore these a bit further, shall we - after all it's always interesting to see how these people twist reality to suit their politics.

Pete Vere, a Catholic writer who has been working on the clashes between the Human Rights Commissions and Christians, asked Mark van Dusen, a media spokesman for the CHRC, “If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?”

van Dusen replied, “We investigate complaints, Mr. Vere, we don’t set public policy or moral standards. We investigate complaints based on the circumstances and the details outlined in the complaint. And ...if...upon investigation, deem that there is sufficient evidence, then we may forward the complaint to the tribunal, but the hate is defined in the Human Rights Act under section 13-1.”

That's the bit that Lifesite wants you to pay attention to. If, however, you read a little further on, you discover what reality really is:

“Our job is to look at it, compare it to the act, to accumulated case law, tribunal and court decisions that have reflected on hate and decide whether to advance the complaint, dismiss it or whether there is room for a settlement between parties.”

In short, in a classic conservative line of questioning, a question was asked that calls for an absolute answer, and the CHRC responded with "it depends". Of course it depends on something - context and situation. When we are talking about topics such as the intersection between various aspects of the civil/human rights debate, there are seldom absolutes.

The real debate going on today (including cases like Boissoin) is about where the intersection of rights actually lands. When does "expressing an opinion" become promoting hate? Or when does "an opinion" arguably lead to violence or discrimination against some second or third party?

Of course, that isn't how Lifesite wants to frame it:

The issue before the CHRC, therefore, is whether Christian and Catholic teaching itself is considered under Canadian law to be “hate speech”.

Still more absolutism speaking here. In such circumstances, one has to ask if every utterance of someone who is Catholic is in fact "Catholic"(™)? In other words, just because a person claims to be a practicing Catholic (or member of any other faith), does that automatically extend protections to everything that they say on controversial subjects? What is the legal status of those utterances should the church decide that in fact the statements are heresy, and disavows them?

Just to muddy the waters even further, it's not as if the greater body of Christianity is unified in its teachings on sexuality at all. There is a great deal of differentiation between the various churches, so you can't even argue that there is a teaching on sexuality that is universally held within the broad spectrum of beliefs that stand under the umbrella term "Christian".

In the second article, we find the following:

A Saskatchewan human rights tribunal has fined Regina marriage commissioner Orville Nichols $2,500 for refusing to "marry" two homosexual men who approached him for the ceremony in 2005.

Mr. Nichols told the two men, identified only as "M.J." and his partner as "B.R." in the court documents, he would not marry them because it went against his religious convictions as a devout Baptist, but referred them to another commissioner, Edna McCall, because he was aware that she would perform same sex marriages.

Let's consider this for a moment. A marriage commissioner is a form of public servant - they are licensed to solemnize marriages before the law. They are not by definition ordained ministers acting simultaneously in their capacity as clergy.

If we start granting public servants the right to deny service based on some "religious belief", we return very quickly to the days of segregation and "separate but equal" treatment. The cold, hard fact is that under Canadian law, we are all equal before the law and government. Therefore, anyone who is a public servant is obliged to respect that reality when they are delivering government services to citizens.

The tribunal ruling stated that Mr. Nichols had contravened section 31.4(b) of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code and that his refusal based on religious belief conflicted with his duties as a public officer. "The Commission stands by its position that to allow public officials to insert their personal morality when determining who should and who should not receive the benefit of law undermines human rights in Saskatchewan beyond the issue of same-sex marriages."

Of course, the wingnuts over at Lifesite continue their argument by painting the commissioner in question as such a wonderful, noble and upstanding citizen, and by implication, is being downtrodden by the evil human rights commission:

Mr. Nichols testified at the hearing that he had never received a complaint in his 24 years of service as a marriage commissioner, nor had there ever been a problem with any of the services that he had provided in his capacity as a marriage commissioner, even though he had in a number of different situations refused to perform a marriage ceremony, such as marriages of convenience for immigration purposes or when he had been asked to perform a marriage dressed up in a cowboy costume.

There's quite a difference between the examples cited above and denying services to a GLBT couple:

1. A "marriage of convenience" is something that is attempting to subvert the immigration process. There are good ethical (and possibly legal) reasons why knowingly participating in such a scheme is suspect at best. (Arguably to do so is in fact to perpetrate a fraud)

2. Being asked to participate in a manner that goes beyond the solemnization of the marriage itself (e.g. dressing in a "theme costume") is also a legitimate reason to walk away. Remember, at that point, the reason for denial of service is in fact not denying anyone access to legal services that others would receive from you. No protected grounds of discrimination have been violated here.

Meanwhile, denying someone service that you would grant to somebody else - based entirely upon your moral assessment of the situation, puts you into much more dubious straights when we are talking about people acting as agents of the government.

Of course, in the minds of Lifesite's writers, these are all examples of how Christians are being "persecuted" in the public square. Never mind that what is really happening is that discrimination based on Christian scriptures is being called out for what it is - discrimination, and often unlawful discrimination.

(BTW - if Christianity were really being "persecuted", one might well imagine that the CHRC and related bodies would have long since taken the Roman Catholic Church to task in Canada for its refusal to ordain women - a clear violation of Charter Rights no matter how you twist it - however, the CHRC has not touched such cases, arguing that in fact such matters are protected under Freedom of Religion and thus rightly handled within the context of the Catholic Church hierarchy)