http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/canadian-supreme-court-kills-last-hope-for-free-speech/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3fbc0cd0ca-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag
That sound you hear is Voltaire rolling over in his grave.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Once upon a time, it was commonly understood that this sentiment is the very foundation of a free society. Compromise free speech, water it down, and you destroy freedom itself.
In Toronto there lives a man named Bill Whatcott. During the last two decades or so, he has spent much of his time traveling around Canada, waving protest signs at gay-pride parades and Planned Parenthood clinics, agitating for the criminalization of homosexual acts and abortion, and distributing fliers packed with incendiary language about gays and graphic images of aborted fetuses. In 2010 the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined him $17,500 for distributing “hateful” materials; an appeals court overturned the ruling, whereupon the province’s Human Rights Commission appealed the case to the Canadian Supreme Court. Now the Court has ruled, and it’s an icy day for freedom in the Great White North.