Magazine racks up human rights legal fees

Catholic Insight faces hate complaint

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Toronto

Catholic Insight Magazine has paid $6,000 in legal fees fighting a human rights "hate" complaint, yet no hearing date is in sight.

For a small circulation (3,500 subscribers) conservative specialty magazine, "it has cost us quite a bit," said the magazine's editor, Basilian Father Alphonse de Valk.

"We're getting some donations, fortunately, even though we haven't done anything," de Valk said in a telephone interview.

It's not only the money. De Valk said he and staffer Tony Gosgnach have spent an "enormous amount of time" on the issue since they became aware of the complaint a year ago.

"We probably spend three days a week, two people, just keeping up with what's going on in this," he said.

In February 2007, the magazine received a letter from Canadian Human Rights Commission's (CHRC) investigator Sandy Kozak saying the magazine was "being investigated for hate literature."

Rob Wells, an Edmonton resident complained of material hateful against homosexuals.

Included in the letter were "three long sheets with endless quotes that Rob Wells has culled from our articles."

De Valk said the complaint contained no sources for the out-of-context quotes.

They asked the CHRC to provide the articles containing the offending quotes. "That took four or five months," he said.

Eventually they received 16 articles that provided the context for the complaint.

De Valk admitted "there is vigorous language in some of them," but pointed out each article contained counterbalancing commentary in the Catholic tradition.

The articles opposed the agenda of homosexual activists, but "weren't attacking any individual persons."

Catholic Insight decided to go public last December after human rights complaints against Maclean's Magazine became the subject of many columns and editorials.

Maclean's faces human rights complaints from the Canadian Islamic Congress for an excerpt of Mark Steyn's book America Alone entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam."

De Valk has also been following the news concerning former Western Standard publisher, Ezra Levant who faced complaints to the Alberta Human Rights Commission two years ago for republishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

But de Valk sees Catholic Insight's battle as much more difficult because the "gay drive for equality under the guise of its being a right" has been popular.

Steyn and Levant are perceived to be fighting Islamic extremists, and "have the wind in their sails."

Aggressive secularism

De Valk said most Canadians believe the battle for gay rights is of no consequence to them. "Many Catholics have been asleep at the switch, not interested," he said.

"It (secularism) is not just a neutral thing," he said. "Secularism is aggressive."

The rapid change in the traditional definition of marriage over a short period of time is one example, and de Valk worries that religious freedom and freedom of speech is next.

He is concerned that the Canadian Human rights Act "does not accept truth as a validating criteria." Under the act, "when my feelings are hurt, you pay; you are spreading hatred."

He is also concerned about last November's Alberta Human Rights Panel decision in the case of pastor Stephen Boissoin, who wrote a letter to the editor critical of gay activists.

The panel chair determined that the "right" to be protected from "hatred and contempt" trumped the charter's guarantee of religious freedom.

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