By Christopher Hitchens

Read the full article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2263334

EXCERPTS:

The dispute over the construction of an Islamic center at “Ground Zero” in Lower Manhattan has now sunk to a level of stupidity that really does shame the memory and the victims of that terrible day in September 2001. One might think that a mosque or madrassa was being proposed in the place of the fallen towers themselves or atop the atomized ingredients of what was once a mass grave.

…

Take, for example, the widely publicized opinion of Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Supporting those relatives of the 9/11 victims who have opposed Cordoba House, he drew a crass analogy with the Final Solution and said that, like Holocaust survivors, “their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.” This cracked tune has been taken up by Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, who additionally claim to be ventriloquizing the emotions of millions of Americans who did not suffer bereavement. It has also infected the editorial pages of the normally tougher-mindedWeekly Standard, which called on President Obama to denounce the Cordoba House on the grounds that a 3-to-1 majority of Americans allegedly find it “offensive.”

…

Nothing could be more foreign to the spirit and letter of the First Amendment or the principle of the “wall of separation.” In his incoherent statement, Foxman made the suggestion that it might be all right if the Cordoba House was built “a mile away.” He appears to be unaware that an old building at the site is already housing overflow from the nearby Masjid al-Farah mosque.

Read the full article:  http://www.slate.com/id/2263334

This article also appears here.

This is an analysis of the courtroom proceedings in Perry v. Schwarzenegger and the August 4, 2010 decision by Judge Vaughn Walker upholding the right of same-sex couples to marry and not an analysis of the moral reasoning behind either position.

Summary

In short, Judge Walker ruled based on the evidence presented, as any trial judge should, and regardless of his own personal sexual orientation or biases, Prop 8 supporters simply did not make a viable case for themselves. Sloganeering may have won the election but did not win a trial where real evidence was required. Prop 8 supporters may later look at the ruling and claim it was wrongly decided but as this essay points out, the reality is that they did a poor job presenting their evidence and only put two witnesses on the stand, both of whom had previously written statements that contradicted their testimony in favor of Prop 8. When both of these witnesses were neutralized, Prop 8 advocates had nothing left with which to prove their case and any effort by any judge to add in facts to uphold Prop 8 would have been the very definition of judicial activism.

How Prop 8 Became Law

In May 2008, the California Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage was permissible under the state constitution and thousands of same-sex couples were married. In November 2008, by a vote of 52% to 48% California voters passed Proposition 8 ( “Prop 8″ ) a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

This constitutional amendment was argued before the California Supreme Court. At oral argument in March 2009, the court asked Ken Starr, lead counsel in favor of Prop 8, whether there was any limitation to what the people could do.

Speaking of the state constitution, Starr replied, “The right of the people is inalienable to change their constitution through the amendment process. The people are sovereign and they can do very unwise things, and things that tug at the equality principle.”

Despite the vast implications of Starr’s statement, the court found itself powerless to overturn Prop 8.

The Question Before the Court

When David Boies and Theodore Olson brought suit against Prop 8 in Federal Court alleging that the equality principle of the Federal Constitution was violated when the people of California took away the existing right to marry, the argument focused on a simple question, “Is there a compelling state reason, or even a rational basis, for California to prohibit same-sex marriage?”

During the run-up to the November 2008, Prop 8 supporters were free to say anything to get votes. They took full advantage of this by portraying a parade of horrors that same-sex marriage would bring and played to gut-level anti-homosexual feelings. They argued that churches would be forced to perform gay marriages. They argued that it would lead to increases in child molestation. They argued that the Bible said homosexuality was wrong and that the state law should mirror the Bible.

But in Federal court, Prop 8 supporters needed to present legal, secular empirical evidence to support the idea that same-sex marriage was such a threat that the government was compelled to put a stop to it. This argument was made more difficult by the fact that a handful of states already approved same-sex marriage.

In this context, personal or religious convictions and moral arguments needed to be backed up with objective facts. Unlike the California Supreme Court, Judge Walker was not beholden to the simple fact that the California constitution had been amended. He was charged with examining the evidence for and against Prop 8 in light of the U.S. Constitution.

The Evidence Presented

As in any trial, the judge would have to make a decision based on the evidence presented. He did not have the luxury of filling in the gaps in the testimony in order to reach a decision in line with his own feelings, which is the hallmark of being an “activist judge.” Rather, he had to rule based on the facts presented, and this is what he did in his lengthy ruling which is available online athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/35374801/Prop-8-Ruling

To challenge Prop 8, same-sex marriage advocates brought forward eight lay-witnesses, including two same-sex couples, and nine expert witnesses. The lay-witnesses described their feelings of being discriminated against and the idea that the law was not fair. Expert witnesses testified to various facts and statistics that they said demonstrated that same-sex marriage was not socially harmful. These were the standard arguments that same-sex marriage proponents have been making for years and there really was nothing new or novel.

Same-sex marriage advocates even called Hak-Shing William Tam on the stand in order to demonstrate that voters had been given incorrect information and voted based on anti-homosexual prejudice. Tam’s name had appeared next to the ballot arguments in the voter information pamphlets in the run-up to the November 2008 election. Tam had helped craft many of the arguments for Prop 8 and he testified that, as he stated on his website promoting Prop 8, he believed that homosexuals were 12 times more likely to be pedophiles, but could not state where he got this information.

Tam also admitted he had stated that incest and polygamy had been legalized in the Netherlands soon after the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2001. This was factually untrue. The questioning went like this:

David Boies: “You are saying here that after same-sex marriage was legalized, the Netherlands legalized same incest and polygamy?”

Tam: “Yeah, look at the date, Polygamy happened afterward.”

Boies: “Who told you that? Where did you get that idea?”

Tam: “It’s the Internet. Another person in the organization found it and he showed it to me. . . . I looked at the document and I thought it was true.”

Prop 8 Advocates Presented Only Two Witnesses And Neither Was Consistent Or Credible

Prop 8 supporters cross-examined these pro-same-sex marriage witnesses extensively but despite the large number of people who had promoted Prop 8, Prop supporters only put up two witnesses to defend the Proposition. With so few, Prop 8 defenders should have realized that they needed to put their best foot forward and present overwhelming evidence. Instead, Prop 8 supporters presented weak witnesses who had previously contradicted the pro-Prop 8 position.

David Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values think tank, was anticipated to be Prop 8’s star witness. Normally expert witnesses need to “qualify” to testify in that capacity, as the court relies on them heavily when making decisions. In this case, Judge Walker allowed Blankenhorn’s testimony to be heard as an expert despite his lack of academic credentials or research and reserved the right to determine later whether he really qualified as an expert.

Blankenhorn gave contradictory testimony that marriage is a “socially-approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman” with a primary purpose to “regulate filiation”; but he also said that it was a “private adult commitment” between a man and a woman.

Blankenhorn wilted when Boies brought forward evidence that Blankenhorn had previously made written statements that Blankenhorn believed that marriage was important and could even benefit gays and lesbians, their children, and society at large. He also admitted a previous statement that same-sex marriage could lead to less sexual promiscuity. Then Blakenhorn shot Prop 8 advocates in the foot when he said that he still believed his previous statement that, “We would be more American on the day we permit same-sex marriage than the day before.”

In his decision, Judge Walker found Blakenhorn’s testimony was not credible due to his inconsistent statements. After all, which Blankenhorn was he to believe? Judge Walker spends several pages defending his decision not to give Blankenhorn expert status and to dismiss his testimony as not credible.

Prop 8 proponents’ last best hope was Professor Kenneth P. Miller, an expert in American and California politics at Claremont McKenna College. Miller was expected to testify as an expert that gays and lesbians were not really a downtrodden minority and were not harmed by Prop 8’s disparate treatment of opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

Although same-sex marriage advocates objected to his lack of qualifications in the area of same-sex marriage, the court allowed him to testify.

At the trial level, an expert is expected to have a knowledge of materials listed he or she relies on and lists in an “expert report.” Miller testified that his “expertise” in the area was based on materials given to him by the Prop 8 attorneys and that he had only read “most of the materials” and had “tried to review all of them.”

When Miller took the stand, like Blankenhorn, he was trapped by his previous writings that ultimately undermined his argument. In 2001, Miller had written an article in the Santa Clara Law review entitled “Constraining Populism: The Real Challenge of Initiative Reform” in which he wrote that gays and lesbians, like other minorities, are vulnerable and powerless in the initiative process. He also admitted that at least some of those who voted for Prop 8 did so purely out of anti-gay sentiment.

The Decision And Its Aftermath

Given the fact that Judge Walker was dealt this hand, focused same-sex marriage advocates and two scattered Prop 8 witnesses this outcome was inevitable. Had they presented a solid case, some element of bias might be taken into account, but they presented such a sad defense of Prop 8 that a ruling in their favor would have required the judge to admit objective facts that they did not bring forward.

Predictably, despite the inexcusably poor showing by Prop 8, the religious right is painting Judge Walker as an “activist judge” who “ruled from the bench.” We are even seeing arguments that Prop 8 should have never been brought to trial and that the “will of the voters” should have prevailed.

The Prop 8 defense was fundamentally ineffective and was unable to explain why in any way it was necessary to take away same-sex marriage rights in order to protect a compelling state interest. They even failed to demonstrate that there was a rational basis for Prop 8.

Despite the deficit in Prop 8 advocacy, Judge Walker clearly spent a great deal of time considering the matter and writing an airtight decision that will be incredibly difficult to refute on appeal.

The question remains as to whether Prop 8 supporters will cut their losses now and allow California to join a handful of states where gay marriage is legal or whether they will appeal to the Ninth Circuit and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court which could nationalize same-sex marriage.

###

For further reading see:

http://spectrummagazine.org/blog/2009/03/16/raw_majority_power_why_check…

http://spectrummagazine.org/node/1981

EXCERPT:

June 4, 2010 – Religious leaders in the US and Latin America have denounced Arizona’s controversial new immigration law. The law requires police to question people about their immigration status, if officers suspect the person is in the US illegally, and if they have stopped them for a legitimate reason. Archbishop Rafael Romo Munoz, of Tijuana, Mexico, said it was “inhuman”.

Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, head of the US bishops’ committee on migration, warned it could lead to racial profiling and create divisions between the police and immigrant communities.

Archbishop Munoz said the measure would “make it possible to detain someone based on their external appearance”.

The criticism came as President Barack Obama, who says the law is misguided, met Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. Mr Obama has made immigration reform a priority, amid pressure from US border states for action to help curb illegal immigration and drug violence.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10233879.stm

Dr. Michael Newdow, an attorney and physician famous for his litigation on church-state issues from an atheist perspective, and and previous article contributor to ReligiousLiberty.TV, has now published an important law review article for the Capital University Law Review that discusses the history of American religious freedom and tolerance and why the majority should carefully consider the rights of the minority.  Although one might disagree with his religious viewpoint, Newdow argues for people to be treated equally, regardless of what religious viewpoint they hold.

Here is an excerpt:

In reviewing the history of the religion clauses of the Constitution, onecan take two paths. One supports the basic ideal underlying ourconstitutional framework: equality, which is inclusive and is based onrespect for all religious opinions. The other leads to exclusion byadvocating for one or more non-universal religious views. The first reflects the Framers’ goals for guaranteeing liberty to all. The other guarantees liberty only to those who muster the political might to use the state’s machinery to advocate for their religious beliefs. The first exists to protect every individual. The other focuses on the fact that the white, male, property-owning Framers believed in God, and thus concludes thatthe magnificent document they created “permits the disregard” of religious minorities with alternative beliefs.

Why would anyone choose that latter path? Why go out of the way to“permit the disregard” of a minority when such a notion is nowhere to be found within the text of the Constitution, and a historical reading can as readily and more nobly support the equality principle? What sort of American patriot, citizen, or public servant would work towards such an end?”

The entire article, which is well worth reading, is available in PDF format for free download at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594374 (Click on “One-Click Download” once you follow this link to download the entire document for free.)

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT:

In June 2005, Justice Antonin Scalia contended that ‘the Establishment Clause…permits the disregard of devout atheists.’ This statement is extraordinary inasmuch as it appears to reverse an inexorable (albeit, at times, wandering) trend toward true equality. Thus, where individuals had previously been treated as less than equal on the basis of race (e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford), gender (e.g., Bradwell v. State) and national origin (e.g., Korematsu v. United States), those odious decisions are no longer good law. In his McCreary dissent, it seems that Justice Scalia sought motion in the opposite direction: toward overturning equality, in the one constitutional arena where the Supreme Court had not previously proclaimed such a manifest animus toward minorities: religion.
This article takes three approaches in considering the Justice’s argument. First, recognizing that Justice Scalia prides himself on being a ‘textualist,’ it considers the Establishment Clause’s text (‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’). Next, because Justice Scalia, in McCreary, used specific historical events to support his thesis, those events are analyzed to see if they were selected in a fair manner, and if they really stand for the proposition he claims.

Finally, in Part III, Justice Scalia’s brand of analysis is applied to his own Catholicism. It is shown that the United States of America was born of a literal hatred for Catholics, which was pervasive and persistent. One may well conclude, therefore, that under his approach, the Establishment Clause permits the disregard of his own religion.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594374 (Click on “One-Click Download” once you follow this link to download the entire document.)

Oregon Legislature Votes Down 1923 Ban on Teachers Wearing Religious Dress

By Michael Peabody – This month we have a couple of big stories coming out of the great Pacific Northwest. In Oregon, the legislature has passed a bill championed by the Northwest Religious Liberty Association that overturns a 87-year-old law that prohibited teachers from wearing religious dress in the classroom.  It is presently sitting on governor Ted Kulongoski’s desk awaiting signature.

This was the surviving part of a package of laws that was put into place in 1923 after the KKK had convinced Oregon voters to change the state’s constitution to require all students to attend public schools, and consequently prohibit all private education, including religious education. The voters had been given the notion that public education was the only way to keep students from being taught all kinds of off-beat ideas such as racial tolerance in private schools. In order to keep the now unemployed Catholic teachers from working in the public schools, they prohibited public school teachers from wearing religious dress. At the same time, Christian teachers could wear a cross or other small items, but Jewish yarmulkes and Sikh turbans were prohibited, and teachers wearing them would not only be required to go home and change – they would lose their teaching license.

Over time, the cause of prohibiting teachers from wearing religious dress was taken up by the ACLU and other church-state separation absolutists, despite the fact that the bill had enough loopholes for Christian teachers, but prohibited other people whose faith required them to wear religious dress from entering the teaching profession.

This law was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court in the 1980s when a Sikh teacher was kicked out of the profession for wearing her religious dress even though she made it clear that she was wearing it as part of her personal religious commitment and had no intention of converting her students to her religion. Although it was purely a cultural issue, Oregon’s Sikh boys and girls in the public schools would soon learn that they could never expect to teach in the classrooms where they were learning. Neither could Orthodox Jews or members of other faiths who were required by their beliefs to wear certain types of dress.

During the early 2000s, as the Northwest Religious Liberty Association and other groups worked toward a Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), the ACLU didn’t have a problem with the bill, which required employers to make reasonable attempts to accommodate religious employees’ holy day observance and religious garb, but they did have a problem applying this law to teachers.

Because of this exclusion, at one point, the Sikh organization SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) actively called for the governor to veto the WRFA legislation unless teachers were also covered. They had experienced firsthand the effect of the educational exemption when a teacher was fired for wearing her Sikh cultural / religious dress, and wanted to make sure it was covered. The promoters of WRFA met with the Sikh community and expressed solidarity on the educational exemption, and indicated that they would be back once WRFA passed to work on clean-up legislation the next session that would fix this problem.

As promised, the next year, Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt and other legislators influenced by a multi-faith lobby put a law on the table that would overturn this decades old exemption, and as a result of these efforts, Oregon has joined the 47 other states that will make reasonable attempts to accommodate the religious dress of teachers.

This does not mean that teachers who wear particular dress as part of their sincere religious practice can try to convert their students, after all the Establishment Clause is still in place, but they are no longer excluded from the field of teaching.  Legislators had to balance the interests of protecting children from potential proselytizing while protecting the rights of teachers. I believe that the Oregon legislature struck the right balance in overturning this ban. However, we will need to be vigilant on the other end to protect the rights of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their students.

What this bill does is recognize that the United States is a diverse country made of people of many faiths – although Americans don’t all have to believe the same thing, we do need to learn to live together in peace and should not discriminate against reasonable teachers because they have to wear certain things as part of their faith.

For previous articles on this subject see:

3 states still ban religious clothing for teachers (Associated Press)

EXCERPT: PORTLAND, Ore. — A law backed by the Ku Klux Klan nearly a century ago to keep Catholics out of public schools is still on the books in Oregon, one of the last states in the nation to prohibit teachers from wearing religious clothing in classrooms. Both Pennsylvania and Nebraska have …

California Supreme Court to Decide A Case Where Medical Rights v. Workplace Religious Freedom

Soon after issuing its opinion that gay marriage cannot be prohibited under the Constitution, the California Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling in a case where a physician declined to provide fertilization services on a lesbian (unmarried) couple, but referred them to another clinic that did provide the …

Governor signs Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act

Northwest Religious Liberty Association Press Release – July 21, 2009 The Stage Was Set On a sweltering Friday summer evening, and just two minutes prior to going on stage before approximately 2,000 Seventh-day Adventist Christians at the Gladstone, Oregon Campmeeting, the Honorable Representative Dave Hunt (D), Speaker of the House of Representatives for the …

Northwest Religious Liberty Association Honors Oregon Speaker Dave Hunt

Representative Dave Hunt, speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives, was awarded by the Northwest Religious Liberty Association (NRLA) at the Oregon Conference Campmeeting in Gladstone on July 17, 2009 for his legislative sponsorship of the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act, Senate Bill 786 (SB 786) which was signed into law by …

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signs the Workplace Religious Freedom Act

Breaking News:  We have received word that Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski has signed the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act (SB 786). SB 786 requires employers to make credible attempts t

Michael Peabody interviews Jason Hines, attorney and Andrews University seminary student, about the topic of same-sex marriage and why religious groups need to be careful to protect liberty of conscience in their advocacy on this issue.

[display_podcast]

EXCERPT:

I’M DRIVING HOME ONE DAY LAST SEPTEMBER with a major assignment on my mind—a formal presentation at an October conference in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of what some have called the most controversial book in Adventism: Questions on Doctrine. My radio is tuned to CSPAN, and on comes a live report of the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of one of the United States’ most significant civil rights events—the integration of an Arkansas high school in 1957 by a group that’s come to be known as the “Little Rock Nine.”

Suddenly, the stark irony in the coincidence of the two events as they unfolded 50 years ago struck me. On the one hand, an entire nation grappling with fundamental issues of human rights—innocent little children in danger of being killed simply for attempting to attend the school of their choice. On the other, a church preoccupied with fixing its own theology, seemingly oblivious that the very rights being agonized over in the larger community were being denied children within its own communion.

Read the full article here.

California’s debate regarding same-sex marriage will become a national issue if the United States Supreme Court decides to hear an appeal from either side on the outcome of the recently concluded Perry v. Schwarzenegger case. In Perry, Federal trial judge Vaughn Walker was asked to decide whether Proposition 8, which reversed a prior California Supreme Court decision upholding gay marriage, was constitutional.
Putting the emotional issues aside, this is the cold reality: If the U.S. Supreme Court takes this case and decides to uphold Proposition 8, this outcome could strip away fundamental principles that also protect religious minorities.

In the last 100 years, the Court has overturned popular state laws that prohibited interracial marriage and laws that forced sterilization of children of unwed mothers who were thought by state legislators to be genetically “immoral.” In these cases, states defended their laws on the grounds that they were protecting the safety and morality of the citizens, but the Court reviewed the cases using the higher level of scrutiny found in the case of United States v. Carolene Products (1938). In Footnote Four, Justice Harlan Stone wrote that cases that met three criteria were subject to a higher level of scrutiny.
A law would receive the higher level of scrutiny, or “strict scrutiny,” (see appendix for an outline) if it:

1. On its face violates a provision of the Constitution (facial challenge).
2. Attempts to distort or rig the political process.
3. Discriminates against minorities, particularly those who lack sufficient numbers or power to seek redress through the political process.

In other words, the majority does not always win just because it is a majority. This reasoning has been applied to the school prayer cases, civil rights cases, and a number of other discrimination cases where the Court has ruled against an abusive majority. The trend of upholding the individual rights of minorities, and in particular religious minorities, has been the subject of intense criticism by many on the right who view some individual rights that run contrary to their religious beliefs as a threat to Christian America.

Added to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Loving v. Virginia which found that marriage was a fundamental right, unless there is some major shift in the Court’s approach, the Court will likely apply strict scrutiny to Proposition 8.
The California Supreme Court had based its decision upholding Proposition 8, not on a moral or social safety reason, but simply that the majority should win by virtue of its majority status. The California court simply said that it did not have the power to overturn the will of the voters, and in fact held that “Proposition 8 must be understood as creating a limited exception to the state equal protection clause.”

Thus, the Court admitted that Proposition 8 created a carve-out in the overall spectrum of rights. Justice Moreno, in his lone dissent, stated that “[T]he aim of Proposition 8 and all similar initiative measures that seek to alter the California Constitution to deny a fundamental right to a group that has historically been subject to discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification, violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning.”

There is no legal distinction between protected classes in California, regardless of one’s religious qualms, and now that sexual orientation has been exempted from marriage rights (recognized as fundamental rights in federal and state jurisprudence), religious minorities, who have struggled in California, are now subject to exemption.

All this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court at a time when minority religious groups have been facing a rollback of rights that reverses the trend of applying strict scrutiny. Since the Employment Division v. Smith case was decided in 1990, the Court has begun to recognize an increasing number of exceptions to individual rights to practice one’s faith without governmental intervention.

If the Supreme Court upholds Proposition 8, it will effectively eviscerate the principles found in Carolene Products and will create a national destabilization of individual rights. This may not matter in states where religious minorities are protected by the good will of the majority, but in other states rights of religious minority groups may start to slowly disappear.

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You can read the trial briefs and trial transcripts at the American Foundation for Equal Rights website.  (We do not necessarily endorse all of their arguments, but AFER provides a valuable storehouse of the case documents in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.)

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BRIEF OUTLINE OF STRICT SCRUTINY
To pass strict scrutiny, the law or policy must satisfy three prongs:
First, it must be justified by a compelling governmental interest. While the Courts have never brightly defined how to determine if an interest is compelling, the concept generally refers to something necessary or crucial, as opposed to something merely preferred. Examples include national security, preserving the lives of multiple individuals, and not violating explicit constitutional protections.

Second, the law or policy must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest. If the government action encompasses too much (overbroad) or fails to address essential aspects of the compelling interest (under-inclusive), then the rule is not considered narrowly tailored.

Third, the law or policy must be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest. More accurately, there cannot be a less restrictive way to effectively achieve the compelling government interest, but the test will not fail just because there is another method that is equally the least restrictive. Some legal scholars consider this ‘least restrictive means’ requirement part of being narrowly tailored, though the Court generally evaluates it as a separate prong.

From http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/dec/09120706.html

EXCERPT:

CALGARY, December 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Gerald Chipeur, the lawyer who represented Pastor Stephen Boissoin, has said that the recent ruling in favor of Mr. Boissoin “will have a significant long term positive impact on religious freedom in Canada.”

Pastor Boissoin was exonerated by a Court of Queen’s Bench judge last week after being subjected to the proceedings of the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal for over seven years. The Tribunal had found Boissoin guilty of “hate speech” for having written a letter to the editor of a local newspaper about the homosexualist agenda.

But Justice Earl C. Wilson last week ruled the letter Mr. Boissoin wrote to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate on June 17, 2002 on the subject of homosexual-rights curricula in the province’s educational system was not a hate crime but legitimate expression allowed under freedom of speech.

“The decision of Justice Earl Wilson of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Boissoin v Lund will have a significant long term positive impact on religious freedom in Canada,” Gerald Chipeur wrote in a summary analysis of the judgment, forwarded to LifeSiteNews.com by Boissoin.

Chipeur states that the bar has been raised substantially on what may in the future be construed as a violation of the “hate” provisions of human rights laws. “The decision established a very high threshold for the conclusion that a publication is in violation of the ‘hate’ provisions of Alberta’s human rights laws,” he said.

Read the full piece at http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/dec/09120706.html