SteynOnline

The title refers to the defendant on the scaffold rather than the plaintiff in the shower in this latest example of the wonderful world of Ontario "human rights".

The Closet Conservative draws our attention to the case of a pre-op transsexual - ie, still with the old meat and two veg, so not to be confused with the equally litigious post-op transsexual in the other great Ontario "human rights" transsexual jurisprudence landmark who demanded Dr Stubbs perform a labiaplasty on her.

In this case, the transsexual applied to join a fitness club in St Catharines and wanted to use the women's area. At this point, she revealed to the owner, John Fulton, that she still had a full set of wedding tackle:

Fulton said he wasn't sure what to do because his female clients might not be comfortable with a man in their changing room. "To me it was not a big deal, I just don't know how my women would feel about having a guy showering with them," he said. "He still hadn't had his operation yet."

So two years later here we are in Ontario "human rights" hell. The plaintiff is now a plaintifette, having had the operation and relocated to Ottawa. But back in St Catharines it's John Fulton's pound of flesh that she and the commissars are determined to extract.

When I was testifying at Queen's Park, I made this point to the parliamentary committee:

Maclean's and I have no fear of Barbara Hall, the commission or the tribunal. You're welcome to try and do your worst to us. We have deep pockets. We pushed back and we filled the newspapers with stories about all these wacky cases that Barbara Hall and others are so obsessed about. Like all tinpot bullies, the commission couldn't take the heat and backed down. But if you're just a fellow who happens to own a restaurant in Burlington, the Ontario human rights regime will destroy your savings, your business and your life for no good reason. The verdict is irrelevant; the process is the punishment.

That's true. Let's take Commissar Hall and the fast waning Professor Moon at their word - that I'm a hater. I'm in the hate business. Hate is my middle name. Hating is what I do. I like my hating so much that when I leave my job at Hate Industries Inc I take my work home with me and hate all night, all weekend, and Victoria Day, too. So, when Commissar Hall decides to catch my eye I'm happy as Larry. Or rather I'm hatey as Larry. It's like a drop of blood in the shark tank. It's like tossing a raw carcase in the tiger's cage. I gambol out to chew on Commissar Hall's leg and have a grand old time. That's the business I'm in.

But Gator Ted in Burlington isn't, and nor is Dr Stubbs at his cosmetic surgery clinic, nor the owner of that strip joint in Mississauga, nor Mr Fulton at Fulton Fitness. They're just regular guys trying to make a living. They're not professional haters, or even mildly "right-wing". Most of these fellows are just the usual go-along-to-get-along squishy Canadians. Apparently, John Fulton has co-sponsored the annual St Catharines Aids walk for years. Does that sound like some foaming Steynian homophobe? Well, a fat lot of good it did him come the day the Ontario "human rights" enforcers showed up to ruin his life.

I also said this in my testimony:

When Mohamed Elmasry announced his suits against Maclean's, he was supported by Terry Downey of the Ontario Federation of Labour, and Ms. Downey, explaining her support for Dr. Elmasry, said, "There is proper conduct that everyone has to follow." Sorry; I pass on that one. For one thing, there is no "proper conduct" in the wacky world of pseudo human rights in this province. The rules are made up as they go along, so even if you wanted to follow them, you can't.

What's the "proper conduct" for Mr Fulton? Decline to let the pre-op use the ladies' changing room and get a "human rights" complaint? Or let the Big Swinging Dick have the run of the shower and get a whole bunch of other suits from his outraged female members?

What's the "proper conduct" for Dr Stubbs? Decline to perform a labiaplasty on the post-op transsexual because he's no idea what he's getting into (so to speak)? Or perform it and risk a malpractice suit for botching an operation?

What's the "proper conduct" for Gator Ted? Tell the medical marijuana guy to stop smoking pot in his doorway and be hauled before the commissars? Or let the guy go ahead and get sued by the trucker sitting next to him at the bar when he fails his drug test?

There is no "proper conduct", only the whims and caprices of nuisance plaintiffs backed by the Ontario government's social engineers. Bar owners and fitness clubs run up five- and six-figure legal bills. The nuisance plaintiffs get the tab picked up by taxpayers, and thus have no incentive to settle.

I returned to my theme during the questioning in Parliament:

The tribunal, I think, needs to be brought within the codes and conventions of this country's legal system. At the moment, it upends them. The burden of proof ought to be on the accuser. The accuser should not be allowed unlimited funds to frivolously torment people for no reason, beggaring them for something that serves no public purpose.

Whatever you think of the marijuana thing, it seems initially to arise from a defectively written law. But that great issue, the issue of where you can smoke medicinal marijuana-the burden of that should not be on Gator Ted. The transsexual labioplasty is perfect nonsense. Any sane person understands exactly what was going on when that doctor said that he was not willing to operate on these two transsexual women.

The idea that people should be essentially punished by a system that does not allow them equality with their accuser is a mark of great shame to this province. If there has to be a tribunal, it should be brought within the bounds of normal legal practice and this province's 800-year legal tradition.

Cheri DiNovo, the NDP member, didn't think much of my breeziness re transsexual jurisprudence, and emphasized her commitment to redressing the injustices "transsexuals and transgendered folk" face. Well, I'm glad the plaintiff in St Catharines has "transitioned" to her new identity. The trouble is the justice system is transitioning along with her. The principles Canadian justice was born with - presumption of innocence, due process, equality before the law - have been systematically chopped off, and what's left has been given extravagant new implants of entirely synthetic "human rights".

We will all have our fun with the right of penises to enjoy the ladies' shower. But Mr Fulton, like Gator Ted, will be ruined in the process. This system is not just ludricous, but profoundly wicked.

For reasons best known to himself, The National Post's Chris Selley chose to pick a fight with the few people who want to ensure that Aqsa Parvez's short life is memorialized by something more than the plot number of an unmarked grave. Pamela Geller and Kathy Shaidle can take care of themselves, and have done, but the reality is that if it weren't for the frothing loony ranting wackjob haters of the blogosphere a 16-year old girl murdered for not wanting to be imprisoned by her family's culture would be entirely forgotten.

So what's more offensive? The moral outrage of Pamela Geller at the westernization of "honor killing"? Or the mainstream coverage by a politically correct media? Here's what the lunchtime poll at Toronto's CITY-TV thought was the big issue arising from Aqsa Parvez's murder:

Do you think society discriminates against women who wear a hijab?

Gotcha. It's our fault.

Here's the weirdly contorted lengths Canada's Number One news anchor, CTV's Lloyd Robertson, went to to avoid telling his viewers Aqsa Parvez had been strangled?

Her neck was compressed, to the point she couldn't breathe.

Here's the Montreal Gazette's editorialists insisting that Mr Parvez and every pure laine papa in la belle province are merely different points on the same continuum:

Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart. Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something...

So which response to this issue is, in Chris Selley's words, "a few chick peas short of a falafel"? The Misses Geller and Shaidle? Or the sensible, reasonable, moderate, measured approach of the PC eunuchs at Canada's most-watched TV stations and major metropolitan newspapers?

When Ezra Levant went nuclear on the "human rights" regime's medieval ass, wise old birds like Catsmeat Kinsella cautioned that Canadians wouldn't put up with some bezerk loon trashing "their" beloved human rights commissions. Really? Whether or not we achieve the repeal of Section 13 and its provincial equivalents, I doubt The Globe & Mail, Professor Moon, and even very tentatively the House of Commons would even be considering the question had it not been for Ezra going ballistic. That's what it took to drag the debate even half-an-inch in the direction of sanity.

I have no views on Chris Selley one way or the other. But I note his response to the Prime Minister's interview with Ken Whyte:

Principal Harper Ends The Free Speech Food Fight.

Each to his own. I don't happen to think of the Queen's first minister as the "principal" with me and the rest of the citizenry as his charges. The head of government is no more or less than just that: He is not my "leader", and certainly not on inalienable rights. But the headline seems to sum up Mr Selley's approach: the judicious arbiter settling midway between two extremes.

Not for me. As I've said re the so-called "global consensus" of the UN, if you mix half-a-pint of vanilla ice cream with half-a-pint of dog feces the result will taste more like the latter than the former. Likewise, if you split the difference between me and Commissar Barbara Hall, or Ezra and Jennifer Lynch, QC, you're still quite a long ways down the road to tyranny. "Moderation" - of the CTV/Gazette school - is a euphemism for drift, for letting the culture be tugged gently, imperceptibly, remorselessly into darkness:

I like the way Deborah Gyapong puts it:

You know why I want to defend Kathy Shaidle? Because she helps keep me honest about whether my civility really is a choice and not a blind or fearful conformity to the pressures of political correctness. She helps me to think about where I might be influenced by group think and the progressive air we breathe in Ottawa. She reminds me of where the line is between kindness and weakness.

Just so. Self-suppression is the most cost-effective form of tyranny. Or as Andrew Klavan says:

The whole way liberals work is to redefine manners and morals in such a fashion that conservative common sense automatically becomes hateful. If you note that women and men are different, you’re misogynistic. If you denounce the destruction of marriage in black communities, you’re racist or moralistic. If you call for the defense of America against the world-wide Islamist menace, you’re a bigoted warmonger. If we take this garbage seriously even for an instant, we spend our whole lives playing catch-up, saying sorry, going on defense.  

Just so. Mr Selley specifically objects to Kathy Shaidle calling Arabs "violent retards". Well, to revive an old device that availed me nought at the British Columbia show trial, "of course" not all Arabs are violent retards, but Arab culture is certainly both violent and retarded. It's politically retarded, intellectually retarded, scientifically retarded, judicially retarded, economically retarded, retarded on almost every objective measurement, from women's rights to free speech. The famous statistic from the United Nations' Arab Human Development Index (2003) - that more books are translated into Spanish in an average year than have been translated into Arabic in the last millennium - is itself a good working definition of "retarded", of a culture that recoils from inquiry and curiosity about the other.

And, as I know from many conversations in London and Paris and (more covertly) in Amman and Cairo, those individual Arabs who are not "violent retards" well understand that - even if the PC eunuchs don't. When Robert Kilroy-Silk made some observations about the Arab penchant for amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to 9/11 - none of which is factually in dispute - the BBC fired him.

So what's the greater sin? That Miss Shaidle fails to draw a clear bright line between a generally observable phenomenon and a statistically 100% universal phenomenon? Or that even raising the generally observable phenomenon is now beyond the pale?

Oh, and by the way: If accuracy is the issue, what are we to make of Cheri DiNovo's assertion that most Canadian men are "violent retards"? Is that true? Or is Ms DiNovo (as several readers have suggested to me) "falsely shouting 'Fire!' in a theatre"?

I don't want more Aqsa Parvezes to be murdered in Toronto or Buffalo, Sweden or Germany. But I can see why some uptight Muslim might not appreciate why the urge to behead your womenfolk is necessarily any kookier than the urge to bebollock your own balls in the cause of multiculti squeamishness. Shaidle, Klavan and Gyapong are right: The pressure to self-neuter will lead to catastrophe.

Over at Free Canuckistan, the Binksmeister captures an historic moment: The Return Of The Legendary Fourth Sock, Daniel Simard (scroll down). When my Canadian "human rights" travails began over a year ago, there were four Sock Puppets fronting for Elmo and the Canadian Islamic Congress and swanning around town pretending to be the plaintiffs. Needless to say, the CBC, Toronto Star et al were happy to take them at their word. In those early days, the Socktastic Four boasted Captain Socktastic, Sock Girl, Socky the Islamophobe Slayer ...and the fourth Sock, Socky the Boy Wonder. Together they fought to abolish Truth, Justice and the American Way. No, hang on... Anyway, the fourth Sock was last heard from battling evil with his awesome superpower of supersnottiness, after which he mysteriously turned into the Invisible Sock. And, by the time I extended my dinner invitation to them over on TVO, they were down to a trio.

But now the Invisible Girl is back! As Binks has noticed, he's on the board of Elmo's latest venture, The Canadian Charger. I'm no Islamic scholar, but, if the Fourth Sock returns, can the Twelfth Imam be far behind?     

Barbara Hall, Chief Commissar of the Ontario "Human Rights" Commission, is now calling for a Canada-wide "press council" that would have statutory powers over all newspapers, magazines, and websites, too. As Ezra Levant puts it:

In healthy democracies, the media is a watchdog over the government.

In the soft tyranny of Canada's human rights commissions, the government is the watchdog over the media.

The Closet Conservative adds:

I am surprised that there is so little outcry from the organized mainstream media about this.

I'm not. It became very clear to me and Maclean's early on in this battle that, for members of a profession that brags about its "courage" incessantly (far more than, say, firemen do), an awful lot of journalists are quite content - as I said at the Ontario parliament - to be the eunuchs in the Trudeaupian sultanate. With the exception of some prominent independent columnists (Margaret Wente, David Warren, Rex Murphy, George Jonas and a few others) many "media workers" see no conflict between attending lunches for World Press Freedom Day every fortnight and agreeing to be micro-regulated by the state. The big problem for those of us arguing for classical liberalism is that in modern Canada there's hardly anything left that isn't on the state pogey to one degree or another: Too many of the institutions healthy societies traditionally look to as outposts of independent thought - churches, private schools, literature, the arts, and yes, the media - have either an ambiguous relationship with government or are downright dependent on it. In the decayed Dominion, "intellectual freedom" means Cinedole Canada or whatever it's called gives you a check to enable you to continue making "bold, brave" films that discombobulate state power not a whit. In outing himself, predictably enough, as just another statist shilling for the faceless control freaks, Professor Richard Moon revealed himself to be an all too typical member of the modern academy.

One of the interesting aspects of my day at Queen's Park was how little ammunition the big guns of the Liberal and New Democratic parties could actually muster. They fired two blanks that barely sputtered. The nice lady Dipper dredged up the "No Irish May Apply" signs - rarer than unicorns even in their alleged heyday - and the Grit guy was even lazier and relied on Oliver Wendell Holmes' clapped out "shouting fire in a theatre" drivel. Why a progressive Canadian Liberal can find no better argument than that of a eugenicist kook swatting down the anti-war protesters of his day is a mystery to me.

But the point is: That's all the argument they need. The default assumption of my all-white liberal-left interrogators was that, if it weren't for Ontario's "human rights" regime, the citizenry would revert to their ugliest knuckledragging inclinations. At one level, this is perplexing. If the natural condition of an Ontarian is to be a racist sexist hatemonger, how have all these nice progressive members of parliament somehow managed to rise above such genetic predispositions? Why are they so uniquely equipped to keep the rest of the citizenry in check?

Well, of course, they're not. But a contempt for the citizenry at large is necessary to justify their and Commissar Hall's sinecures. And in a sense it's entirely understandable. Once you accept the degree of state management that the citizens of modern social-welfare democracies now take for granted, why be surprised that your rulers are no longer prepared to treat you as "citizens"? America is now catching up to the happy condition of Canada and Europe - the Big Nanny security state in which you're relieved of every adult responsibility - to provide your own health care, to look after your family, to work to support them. Why then be surprised that Ontario's Liberal and NDP members assume you can't be entrusted to think for yourself? Or that President Obama talks of his fellow citizens as if they're lame pets and feeble-minded urchins? It may yet prove the case that the Big Government security-blanket state can co-exist with a lively level of individual liberty, free speech and intellectual inquiry, but the results from the heart of the free world are not encouraging. 

After my testimony, I went to see one of the members at Queen's Park, and got lost en route to his office. I found myself in a rather plush corner room with portraits of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and what looked like a couple of thrones, and realized I'd wandered into the Lieutenant-Governor's suite. Retracing my steps I walked back down the corridor past a long line of viceregal portraits of the fellows for whom the province's towns (Sir Isaac Brock) and lakes (John Graves Simcoe) are named. Most of these long-forgotten men (colonial administrators with a far lighter touch than the Barbara Halls of this world) would be astonished at the assumptions about the role of the state made in the hearing room downstairs. But that's where we're at: The battles hard won two and three centuries ago are having to be re-fought in some of the oldest settled democracies on the planet.

There are stages to the enervation of free peoples. America, which held out against the trend, is now at Stage One: The benign paternalist state promises to make all those worries about mortgages, debt, health care go away. Canada is at Stage Two: When the populace has agreed to become wards of the state, it's a mere difference of degree to start regulating their thoughts. When my anglophone Quebec friends used to complain about the lack of English signs in Townships hospitals, my response was that, if you allow the government to be the sole provider of health care, why be surprised that they're allowed to decide the language they'll give it you in? But that's true in a broader sense. If, in the interests of "cultural protection", the state keeps foreign newspaper owners, foreign bookstore owners, foreign TV operators out of Canada, why be surprised that, in return, it assumes the right to police the ideas disseminated through those newspapers, bookstores and TV networks it graciously agrees to permit?

As for Stage Three, Sean Gabb writes from Britain:

The highly selective use of speech codes and hate speech laws has nothing really to do with politeness. It is about power. The British ruling class may talk the language of love and diversity and inclusiveness. What it obviously wants is the unlimited power to plunder and enslave us, while scaring us into the appearance of gratitude for our dispossession. Because the tyrannised are always the majority in a tyranny, they must be somehow prevented from combining. The soviet socialists and the national socialists kept control by the arbitrary arrest and torture or murder of suspected opponents. That is not presently acceptable in England or in the English world. Control here is kept by defining all opposition as 'hatred' – and by defining all acts or attitudes that might enable opposition as 'hatred'.

Eventually, despite the smiley-face banalities, the tyranny becomes more naked. Undercover constables dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor racist remarks by customers. A Telegraph columnist is taken to a police station and questioned over a joke at a rally. A Dutch Member of Parliament is banned from entering the country.

America, Britain, and even Canada are not peripheral nations: They're the three anglophone members of the G7. They're three of a handful of countries that were on the right side of all the great existential conflicts of the last century. But individual liberty flickers dimmer in each of them. The massive expansion of government absurdly dignified as "stimulus" (Stage One) comes with a quid pro quo a few years down the line (Stage Two): Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't nannytollahs like Barbara Hall tell you what you're allowed to think?

And then comes Stage Three, when the enforcers no longer need even to keep up the pretense...