Catholic Priest Investigated for ‘Hate Crime’ in Canada

You know, I’ve never understood “love crimes” as they relate to “hate crimes,” but maybe I’m just slow.

I’ve also never understood why the law should consider the same crime more heinous because it was theoretically motivated by hate of the victim’s physical characteristics…or in the case of neo-”hate crime” law, because of the victim’s sexual behavior. To me, murder is heinous, period; assault is heinous, period, and so on. Doesn’t matter who the victim is or what the perpetrator’s motive was; the crime is the crime. Maybe I’m just not hip to that, either.

But while things are getting ominous here in the United States with “hate crime” legislation (dare I say “thought crime”?), it’s getting downright scary up in Canada.

Pete Vere in the Catholic Exchange writes today about a Catholic priest, Fr. Alphonse de Valk, who is being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC).

Apparently, when this group of politically correct witch-hunters gets you in their sites, your goose is cooked.

The CHRC is using section 13 of Canada’s Human Rights Act to investigate the priest. This is a section under which no defendant has ever won once the allegation has gone to tribunal — the next stage of the process.

Most defendants end up paying thousands of dollars in fines and compensation. This is in addition to various court costs. Moreover, defendants are responsible for their own legal defense. In contrast, the commission provides free legal assistance to the complainant.

Canada has a recent history of persecuting any Christian who doesn’t pay the proper obeisance to the government-mandated approval of homosexuality.

In 2005, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal fined a Knights of Columbus council over $1,000 dollars for declining to rent their hall to a couple for a lesbian marriage ceremony.

Five years previous, the Ontario Human Rights Commission fined Protestant printer Scott Brockie $5,000 for declining to print homosexual-themed stationary. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined Hugh Owens thousands of dollars for quoting a couple of Bible verses in a letter to the local newspaper. And Mayor Diane Haskett in London, Ontario, was fined $10,000 plus interest for declining to proclaim a gay pride day.

So what kind of vicious, bloodthirsty “hate crime” did de Valk perpetrate that so offended the moral conscience of the CHRC?

Father defended the Church’s teaching on marriage during Canada’s same-sex ‘marriage’ debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages – many of who are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman.

Imagine that: this priest had the audacity to repeat his church’s teaching on marriage and human sexuality. This priest was so brutal that he apparently repeated God’s design for human sexuality and His divine definition of “marriage.”

So it seems that even teaching from the Bible may be considered a “hate crime” in “enlightened” Canada.

With liberals in this country clamoring that the United States needs to be more like Canada and the socialist countries of Europe, can this be very far behind here?

The article in Catholic Exchange points out that Christians are already getting hammered here in the States. New Mexico hammered a Christian photographer (a private businessman) who didn’t want to photograph two lesbians make a commitment to each other.

And there are other examples:

- Catholic Charities in Boston was forced out of the adoption ministry because they refused to put children in homes of homosexual couples.

- Boston school teachers have been threatened with termination if they fail to cast homosexuality in a positive light to students.

- The University of Toledo fired a black administrator for writing a “letter to the editor” of a local newspaper about the inconsistency of comparing homosexuality to ethnicity.

- Christians in Philadelphia were arrested for reading Bible verses and praying out loud during a homosexual festival.

- Philadelphia has also decided to stick it to the Boy Scouts (who don’t allow homosexuals in leadership positions of their loyal-to-God organization), charging them $200,000 a year rent to use facilities that other charities use for free.

We’re headed for a bad place, folks. We’ve had it good in America for more than 200 years. We’ve enjoyed religious freedom in a culture founded on Christian values. But we fell asleep and let the inmates take over the asylum.

Not only is the First Amendment about to fly out the window, but freedom in general is right on it’s heels.

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