Strictly Right

Introducing the newest column on Strictly Right – ‘The Sunday Feature’. We’ll take older news or opinion pieces that we think are worthwhile and post them for you on Sundays.

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In Canada, we have Human Rights Tribunals which could be better described as ‘Thought Police for Conservatives’. Rex Murphy, a Commentator on the Communist CBC, actually came out with a tremendous rant against these tribunals. The transcript is below – it really highlights how these monkey courts would rather persecute harmless jokes rather than real human rights violations.

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April 2, 2010 – National Post – Rex Murphy

Too bad Pierre Trudeau wasn’t a little broader in his famous maxim. We could have used a second line: “The state has no business in the comedy clubs of the nation.”

There’s a trial going on in B.C. right now, under the insanely diluted and degraded understanding of the once-noble concept of “human rights,” giving full anguished adjudication — complete with lawyers and a tribunal chairman — over a heckling spat, already three years old, at a Vancouver supper/comedy club called, surely by the gods of irony, Zesty’s.

The good old days, when all a comedian had to worry about was flop-sweat, bad timing and where his or her next joke was coming from, are long gone. Nowadays, thanks to the infinitely expanding reach of bureaucratic commissions, a couple of bad-tempered moments at Zesty’s have summoned up the Mr. McGoos of the B.C. Human Rights Commission. It is currently determining whether a lesbian patron’s human rights were violated by a journeyman comic’s obnoxious heckling of her — brought on, he says, by her equally obnoxious heckling of him. The comic in question is Guy Earle.

It’s a case remarkably similar– in its gutting of common sense, its ability to bring on a puzzled frown from anyone who first hears of it– to that of the owner of a St. Catharines, Ont., fitness club. He recently was taken before the Ontario Human Rights Commission by a prospective member who, while awaiting “gender reassignment surgery,” claimed the right to undress in the club’s women’s locker room. The women objected. The owner denied. The member filed a complaint. That case, after much financial injury and anguish, was summarily dropped. No apology, no redress, no nothing for the owner.

To read the rest of the article, click here to see it on the National Post.

Tags: Canadian Human Rights Commission, Rex Murphy