Alberta Judge Rules Anti-Gay Letter Not Hate Crime, California Judge Says Only Bigoted Parents Would Remove Children From Gay Education

Queen’s Court Justice E.C. Wilson Thursday overturned on appeal a 2008 Alberta Human Rights Commission ruling, and decided a letter written by Stephen Boission, and subsequently published in the Red Deer Advocate should not be considered a hate crime and should instead be considered an exercise in free speech. The letter, by Boission, a former pastor with the far right fringe Concerned Christian Coalition, suggested that gays were as immoral as drug dealers, pedophiles, and pimps, and deemed the “homosexual agenda wicked.” Boission has insisted throughout that he was merely expressing an opinion critical of homosexuality being portrayed in a positive light in the provincial public school curriculum. Darren Lund, a former Red Deer high school teacher, filed the complaint with the HRC, is now a University of Calgary professor and he said that the decision Thursday was “a step backwards for our province. In my view, the judge’s ruling set such strict standards for hate speech that this section is rendered all but unenforceable. I’m hopeful that Albertans hope to keep our communities inclusive and respectful for all people, but this ruling certainly offers no assistance in this regard. If the language contained in the letter does meet the threshold of hateful, I am not certain what possible would.”

Alameda, California Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch Wednesday suggested that the parents who sought to excuse their children from a pro-homosexual public school curriculum were simply “bigots,” and insisted that a homosexual agenda of indoctrination cannot exist because individuals are either born gay or straight. The parents had hoped to exercise a provision in the California Education Code that allow parents the right to opt their children out of health education.