A complaint about song lyrics urging listeners to “kill the Christian” was ignored by the same Canadian human rights chief that fined and gagged a pastor for his views on homosexuality.
There have been calls for the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission to follow the Canadian model more closely, leading to fears that similar inconsistencies could arise here.
Canadian Pastor Stephen Boissoin was brought before Alberta’s Human Rights Commission after a local paper printed his views about the influence of the ‘gay rights’ agenda on the school curriculum.
Commissioner Lori Andreachuk fined Revd Boissoin $7,000 and banned him from publicly expressing his views on homosexuality, alarming observers who raised concerns about free speech.
But it has now come to light that in 2003 the same Commissioner dismissed a complaint against a music group called Deicide who urged listeners to “kill the Christian” in one of their recordings.
Commissioner Andreachuk claimed Christians were not “vulnerable” enough to deserve protecting and the group not a “credible” threat.
The two cases were brought to light by lawyer and blogger Ezra Levant, who has himself won costly victories in two human rights cases brought against him, and is a vocal critic of Canada’s “human rights industry”.
Mr Levant described the rationale for throwing out the complaint as “a smokescreen”.
He added: “It’s not jurisprudence; it’s not coherent; it pretends to adhere to precedent, but it clearly doesn’t.
“It’s legal mumbo-jumbo to cover up the bald political fact here: [Commissioner] Andreachuk thinks it’s fine to call for the murder of Christians.”
Commenting on Levant’s exposure of the Commissioner’s double standard, Revd Boissoin said: “I am certainly not one to suppress freedom of speech but it would appear that Christians are not assured the same standard of protection via these Human Rights Commissions as the rest of Canadians.”
Although the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) differs from its Canadian counterpart because it doesn’t have the power to conduct trials, part of its remit is to “take legal action on behalf of individuals, especially where there are strategic opportunities to push the boundaries of the law”.
It also has “significant powers to enforce the equalities duties of organisations and authorities, including, ultimately, launching official inquiries and formal investigations”.
One of the UK’s EHRC Commissioners is Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the homosexual lobby group Stonewall.
Stonewall recently encouraged supporters to decide who should be ‘bigot of the year’ from a number of Christian nominees who had expressed their beliefs about homosexuality.
Joel Edwards, former head of the Evangelical Alliance (EA), is also a Commissioner, but there have been calls for his removal because of EA’s campaigns for religious liberty protections to be included in recent ‘gay rights’ legislation.