Will Free Speech Prevail in Canada? LaBarbera/Whatcott Trial Scheduled for October 30

Under Canadian law, espousing Judeo-Christian morality on homosexuality is an “Incitement of Hatred”

Calling Moral Speech “Hate”: Canadian Border Services document last April declares AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera “inadmissible” to Canada on the basis that his actions had “incited hate,” thus violating the country’s pro-homosexual anti-“hate-speech” law. LaBarbera appealed the decision and was allowed into Canada, only to get arrested a couple of days later with Canadian pro-family activist Bill Whatcott–as they both refused on principle to heed a police demand to cease a peaceful pro-life and pro-family protest at the University of Regina. Whatcott and LaBarbera go to trial Oct. 30 on a criminal “mischief” charge surrounding the arrest. Go HERE for original AFTAH story on the arrest.

By Peter LaBarbera

Two days after AFTAH’s annual banquet featuring Dr. Michael Brown on Oct. 25, I will be heading off to Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada to stand trial with my friend and Canadian pro-family activist Bill Whatcott. We hope to be exonerated from the criminal “mischief” charge that led to our arrest and incarceration April 14–after we resisted a police order to abandon our peaceful pro-life/pro-family protest at the University of Regina. [See AFTAH’s original story on our arrests HERE.]

At the protest, I held one of Bill’s sign that said, “Sodomy Is a Sin,” as well as a large placard showing an unborn baby. Who can blame the University of Regina and Canadian cops for cracking down on such unbridled and sinister HATE?! (Meanwhile, Muslims, a significant portion of whom follow shariah law—whose punishments against homosexual acts include the death penalty by stoning–are welcomed into Canada as students at U-Regina. Such is the folly of political correctness.)

After our arrest, U-Regina provost and vice president Thomas Chase was quoted in the newspaper as saying that our materials were “graphic” and “disturbing.” Among them was my one-page flier on some of the “Homosexual Health Risks.” Dangerous propaganda, that. Said Chase:

“The materials, we felt, could harm members of this campus community who we have a duty to protect and support.”

Leftists like to use government and institutions to control others, and they often fear a robust and free exchange of competing ideas. This explains U-Regina’s censorship and squelching of a debate that actually would have benefited its students. (We had friendly discussions with some young adults before the arrest.) Such bureaucratic speech “protection” dishonors students, who by the time they reach college should be able to hear all sides of every issue and make decisions for themselves on what they believe.

Almost banned from Canada

Prior to our protest, I learned the hard way that Canada is no longer a truly free country. Arriving at the Regina International Airport on a late flight, and after all the other passengers sailed through Customs, I was detained and questioned by Border Services agents for hours. Agents sifted through all my belongings–including my cell phone and computer–searching for evidence of alleged potential “incitement of hatred.” “Hate” propaganda on the basis of “sexual orientation” is banned in Canada, and the country has forced self-censorship of incoming broadcast transmissions dealing with homosexuality–e.g., broadcasts from Christian ministries like Focus on the Family–for years.

At times the airport investigation of yours truly was as comical as it was surreal: one of the images in my smart phone was of a colorful Nazi swastika. One of the Border agents queried me about it, thinking he might have discovered some compelling proof of “hate.” Perhaps Bill and I were planning a secret rendezvous with the Regina Neo-Nazi Brigade! Alas, I explained to the agent, this particular photo was one that I took at a hateful “gay” activist event in San Francisco’s homosexual Castro district, timed to mock Easter. It falsely equates Christians with genocidal Nazis. The agent didn’t really show much interest as he continued to go through my luggage and papers, book by book and piece by piece.

Ultimately, I was informed that I would be formally denied entry into Canada on the basis that my activities through Americans For Truth violated Canada’s anti-“hate” propaganda law.” You can see the official notice above from border agent Darren Banick. It reads in part:

Peter James LaBarbera….

Is a person who is: A foreign national who has not been authorized to enter Canada and who, in my opinion, is inadmissible…on the grounds of criminally committing an act outside of Canada that…if committed in Canada, would constitute an indictable offence under an Act of Parliament….

Mr. LaBarbera….if allowed in to [sic] Canada he may commit and acts [sic] which would be against the criminal code of Canada. Section 319(1)CC Public Incitement of Hatred. 

Section 36(2)(C) of IRPA [Immigration and Refugee Protection Act] states in that there are reasonable grounds to believe is a foreign national who is inadmissible on the grounds of [criminality] for committing an act outside Canada that is an [offence] in the place where it was committed.

After consulting with Bill, who placed a phone call to an attorney, I appealed the Customs ruling and–after some pressure from conservative Canadian pols was brought to bear–I was allowed into Canada the next day to give my scheduled speech at the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association (SPLA) conference. (Some day I will share the depressing story of how a few pro-life leaders and speakers at the SPLA event threw Bill and me under the bus, having drunk the Kool-Aid on homosexuality-based “rights.” This is also a growing problem in the United States. It is wrong and dishonoring to God to promote the acceptance of one evil (organized homosexuality) in the name of fighting another (abortion-on-demand) [See this dubious LifeNews piece that seems to violate that principle.] Moreover, homosexuality–sterile by definition and disproportionately linked to various STDs like HIV, hepatitis and syphilis–is clearly anti-life.)

Canadian victims of the Gay Thought Police

“Wickedness abounds”: Poster in San Francisco advertises a “fisting” party as part of 2012 “Leather Week” for sadomasochists. The vile event, in which a man sticks his hand and forearm into the rectum and colon of another man, was held at a “gay” bar appropriately named the “Hell Hole.” Canadian pastor Rev. Stephen Boissoin was right when he wrote: “Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.” Boissoin was sued and found guilty by a jaundiced “human rights” tribunal for making such observations. Ultimately, that decision was overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court.

Canada, like the United Kingdom, has traveled far down the Left’s pro-homosexual “hate speech” road in the last decade. This has led to the oppression of Christians and traditionalists whose only “crime” is to publicly voice their agreement with God and the historic Judeo-Christian teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful. My Canadian experience is nothing compared to the ordeals of Canadian citizens like Rev. Stephen Boissoin, an Alberta pastor who was dragged before one of Canada’s “human rights” tribunals because he wrote to the local newspaper asserting that, among other truths:

“Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.”

This is just common sense: San Francisco, anyone? [See “Fisting Party” photo at right.]

Boissoin also wrote the following in his June 17, 2002 letter to the Red Deer Advocate:

“Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.”

Now if you are tempted to condemn the Reverend, if not ban his speech outright as advocated by the Left, consider that in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus (Chapter 18) homosexual sodomy is sandwiched in between children being sacrificed to Molech and bestiality (sex with animals), as preeminent Bible-and-homosexuality scholar Robert Gagnon reminds us.

Apparently the God of the Universe believes sexual sins like homosexuality, incest and bestiality are a big deal. Modern progressive “Christians,” suffused with homosexualist ideology and manipulative LGBT emotional appeals, think otherwise.

Leftists bullies root for jail sentence  

Naturally, “hate speech” laws—like all government-empowering laws redefining sexual perversion as “civil rights”–embolden the Left, which has a long and horrific history of silencing speech and dissent (think communism).

God has given me the blessing (and the curse) of constantly being shocked by the unreasonable and perverse behavior of LGBT activists and the pro-homosexual Left. And so, even though I have closely followed the escalating, pro-“gay” tyranny in America’s northern neighbor over the years, I have been stunned to watch Canadian social leftists work first to DISINVITE me from the SPLA conference, then lobby the government to BAN me from entering their nation; then CHEER my arrest when it happened at U.-Regina with Bill Whatcott; and now voice HOPE that I go to JAIL as a result of the Oct. 30 trial.

There is a price to pay for outlawing Truth: Canada is a mere multicultural shell of the nation it once was—and far less righteous before God. In the same way, I suppose, the United States has been in a moral free fall since the days of Ronald Reagan, when it was already reeling from the Sexual Revolution.

Our attorney tells us that we have a good chance of beating the mischief charge—I can’t go into details here. Some Americans have asked me: Why are you even returning to Canada after all that you went through there?  Because if I didn’t try to clear my name, I would forever have a “record” in Canada, effectively barring me from the country (where my wife and I had our honeymoon 26 years ago, by the way). I simply don’t like to concede ground and basic freedoms to the Pro-“Gay” Thought Police–at a time when U.S.-based homosexual militants are encouraging fellow LGBT activists abroad to shut down “anti-gay” speech. We must never give up on Canada or any nation to return to ways that honor God.

The sheer fanaticism of the Left has beaten Canadians down, to be sure, just like it has worn down Americans and intimidated them from speaking truth. But I think the combination of the USA’s First Amendment (which Canada lacks), coupled with our American spunk, makes the prospect of Canadian-style speech control far less likely in our country than in theirs.

NEXT: The interesting story of Canadian pro-family activist Bill Whatcott–and all the hostility and liberal discrimination he has had to endure as the price for standing up for God’s Truth. What a story!