Earlier this week, I think I was just about alone among any journalists who cared to opine on the subject in suggesting that the Supreme Court of Canada ought to uphold a hate speech conviction against gay-basher Bill Whatcott and that in doing so, the Supreme Court was not making any new law but simply upholding the status quo we have had since the same court ruled in Taylor 21 years ago. (See “Rights tribunal gets it right“)
Whether it was my colleague (and long-time free speech crusader) Ezra Levant to Globe columnist Margaret Wente to the Ottawa Citizen's editorial board — most journalists who opined on this subject suggested Whatcott ought to be able to spew his venom because if he can't, none of us will have free speech rights. They spent a lot of time arguing about the 'principle” that free speech was sacred, inviolable, etc. etc.
But, as the follow letter writer to the Ottawa Citizen notes, perhaps there should have been a greater emphasis on using all of that free speech to more forcefully denounce Whatcott's hate speech and explain to readers how and why it's hateful:
Re: We have a right to free speech, Oct. 12.
The Citizen editorial defending the primacy of free speech ends with the assertion that exposing homophobic comments to the light of facts and sense will cause them to “wither.”
As a gay man who has, along with the rest of my community, had to endure 40 years of such comments I can assure you that they have not “withered” at all, but, like noxious weeds, seem to continue to thrive on the light of publicity given them in the media. I believe firmly that free speech should trump almost any effort, including hate speech laws, to suppress it.
But perhaps if journalists in all media were as passionate in condemning homophobic comments as they are in defending free speech, and, after all this time, gave little or no attention to them, they might, indeed, finally disappear.
Mike Hutton, Ottawa