TWU - A response
to the National Post Editorial Board
Dr.
Angela Cameron, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Mark
L. Berlin, Professor of Practice, Institute for the Study of International
Development,McGill University
Amy Sakalauskas, Practicing Member, Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society
Robert Peterson, Counsel at Dominion GovLaw.ca
Mathieu Bouchard, Partner, Irving Mitchell Kalichman LLP
Both arguments, besides being deeply offensive to LGBTTQ individuals and their friends and allies, are fundamentally flawed.
Looking
at the first argument, one instance of discrimination is one too many. Indeed,
our courts have never accepted that an individual, organization or corporation
be allowed to discriminate against a specific group on the basis that they were
the only one doing so. The National Post’s approach would lead to a race to the
bottom, protecting the last bigot standing in every field of human activity!
This is clearly not what the Charter stands for. Most importantly, arguments
that are reminiscent of those invoked to justify minority quotas in certain
Canadian and U.S. universities until the 1960s, not to say the “separate but
equal” mantra of the segregation era, have no place in today’s Canada.
On
the second argument, the National Post appears to forget that until very
recently, in addition to the prohibition of gay sex, the Bible was used to
justify “mere racist bigotry”. South Africa’s Apartheid, U.S. southern states’
prohibition of interracial marriages, discriminatory laws and policies against
Jews in Christian-dominated countries, to name a few, all supposedly found
their source in the Bible. Did it make them any more acceptable? Of course not!
Bigotry in the delivery of public services, whatever its origins, is a scourge
that cannot be “excused” by religion, whoever the targets of the bigotry are.