What Jordan Peterson Doesn't Understand About Religion and Free Speech

Only a principle of COMPLETE freedom of expression will ensure that YOUR freedom is not taken away. 

There  is also an interesting point about meaning below which aroused my philosophical instincts.  The nature of meaning is a major debate in analytical philosophy. 

With regard to the wedding cake controversy, apparently some Leftists say a cake can have no meaning: "It's just a cake".  Justice Kagan in her SCOTUS ruling concurred, saying the the Christian cake-baker "invests its sale to particular customers with ‘religious significance.’ So the meaning of the cake is entirely in the baker's mind, not in the cake, so therefore doesn't exist.

But that is a non-sequitur.  Meaning can only exist in someone's mind.  An inscription in Chinese will have meaning to Chinese people but will be meaningless to me because I don't speak Chinese. And different meanings may exist in different minds for the same word: What is covered by "freedom", for instance, is often disputed. 

What was at issue in the case was not some non-existent absolute meaning but the baker's feelings and responses.  Baking the cake for him meant disloyalty to the scriptures.  And the First Amendment tells us that he is at liberty to bake or not because of such religious beliefs.

It seems a pity that a Supreme Court justice was too thick to see that what was at issue was a man's beliefs, not some mythical absolute property of a cake.  Kagan was, however, an Obama appointee


Recently, Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Australian comedian Jim Jeffries's show on Comedy Central. The interview did not go particularly well for Peterson, who, among other things, has had a meteoric rise as public intellectual for deftly handling tense interviews regarding his opposition to the cultural left's assault on free speech. There's been some oddly triumphant coverage of what happened. Vice summed up the interview this way, "Watch Comedian Jim Jefferies Finally Shut Up Jordan Peterson."

Here's what happened. Peterson was asked about the issue underlying a recent Supreme Court case: Should bakers be forced to bake wedding cakes for gay weddings if they have religious objections? Peterson says, "I don't think that would be a very good idea." Jeffries then asked if a baker should be able to deny a wedding cake for black people. Peterson says they should probably be allowed to deny service to black customers, "but that doesn't mean it's right." Jeffries then says that the civil rights movement did result in passing laws that required people to serve black people and that made society better and asks Peterson why this is different than now. Peterson says, "Maybe it's not different. ... Maybe I was wrong about that." Obviously, I'm paraphrasing a bit, but you can watch the whole exchange here:

This exchange is useful because it gets at a fundamental problem with religious liberty debates. Peterson's first impulse in favor of free expression in the broadest sense was right, but he got caught flat-footed when presented with a very common and overly simplistic reading of the distinction between where public accommodation laws end and free speech begins. It's a debate that demands some real understanding, as the future of the First Amendment depends on it.

As someone who's covered religious liberty issues for more than a decade, here's the answer I would have given: Business owners should be able to turn down any customer for any reason, period. That's freedom, and I think we're far enough removed from Jim Crow that there would not be widespread discrimination if it were the law of the land tomorrow. Further, businesses who did discriminate would likely be punished in the marketplace. When a bakery in the Portland suburb didn't make a cake for lesbian commitment ceremony, they were run out of business in months. I don't like that this happened to them, but in an area as liberal as Portland, it was very predictable.

However, a funny thing happened. A year and a half after the business was shuttered, the Oregon labor secretary Brad Avakian slapped the bakery owners with a $135,000 fine. When Avakian ran for secretary of state in 2016 the state's major papers didn't endorse him on the grounds that Avakian was too "political," and while bakery wasn't often explicitly discussed the egregious fine was tacitly understood to be part of his problems. The result was Avakian became the first Democrat to lose a statewide election 14 years. Liberal Oregonians thought being punished by the marketplace was both appropriate and enough.

However, since horrifying official racism is still in living memory, commercial freedom is a difficult thing to argue for. So where does that leave us? Note that in the recent Supreme Court decision Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Justice Kennedy's decision very clearly articulated the difference between public accommodation laws and argument for protecting the expression of creative professionals such as bakers (without coming down one way or the other). Still, even defining the difference was a huge victory.

Public accommodation laws to combat Jim Crow were always understood to apply to services that were essentially uniform and interchangeable. A black man wanting a sandwich at a lunch counter, a hotel room, or a train seat wasn't getting service that was any different than the white guy next to him. Beyond that, it legal distinctions about providing more subjective and individualistic services were hazy and deliberately so. Policing the link here involves assuming or determining intent—and it's very easy perceive racist intent where none exists—and this creates a host of problems when it's not an outright a violation of rights. Then there's the intersection of speech and business. Selling racist pamphlets is an overtly discriminatory commercial activity by nature and a lot more harmful than not baking a cake, and yet perfectly legal commercial activity because not tolerating it to some significant degree is not only at odds with the First Amendment but invites the government to make highly subjective judgments about what speech is and is not tolerable.

When the New Mexico wedding photographer case (Elane Photography v. Willock) appeared in 2006, the initial reaction was pretty interesting. I remember going on relevant message boards for wedding photographers and there was a lot of "I'm a liberal who supports gays, but I'm concerned." Wedding photographers retain the copyright to their work, were legally viewed as artists, and very much saw themselves as creatives. It was instinctively understood that the government telling artists what art they had to create was a very bad precedent.

In the related cases that have popped up since, the clearer the occupation is relative to either artistic or lexical expression, the better the odds it will be protected. I think the only one of these cases that has won thus far in a lower court is that of Hands On Originals, a T-shirt printer in Kentucky who declined to print T-shirts for a gay pride event. A significant reason the printer won his case is that the public accommodation argument is belied by the fact he owns a literal printing press that prints words and messages, even if his medium is T-shirts and promotional tchotchkes rather than, say, newspapers.

From there, it's harder to make an argument whether or not bakers or florists count as expressive artists, though it should be obvious enough that a) when it comes to protecting free speech from government interference the prudent thing is to define these matters as broadly as possible b) accepting them on their own terms as artistry should be easy enough since this all centers on custom designs and there are big artistic competitions in both professions. (Bakers are also often asked to put words on cakes in addition to both professions being asked do create things that are overtly symbolic.) Obviously, if I pick up a sheet cake that's pre-made at the grocery store, public accommodation arguments would seem to be applicable. It's also why Jack Philips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, would sell his offended gay customers anything already in his store, but not make them a cake from scratch. His own effort was not intertwined with the wishes of the customer in selling pre-made goods the way it would be in a custom order meant to honor a specific ceremony of religious significance to him. (Notably Phillips doesn't do other things that violate his beliefs, such as make Halloween-themed baked goods.)

Now the media coverage of these issues has not been conducive to dealing with the nuances outlined above. Which has contributed to a situation where, even when liberals start to understand the speech implications, they stumble over their own hypocrisy on public accommodation measures. Having spoken on these issues publicly a number of times I've seen this happen a lot, and prominent defenders of religious freedom tell me it happens to them as well. The conversation you have tends to go something like this:

"What's the big deal? They just want a cake."

"Well, it's not 'just a cake.' What if the customer wants a 48-inch, five-layer cake that when you cut it open has been dyed to look like a rainbow pride flag and has an image of the two grooms respective faces on two fondant sculptures of Michalengelo's David on top and in frosting underneath it says 'Jesus Approves of the Union of Chuck and Buck's Open Marriage' and will take this baker baker three days of his life to make, if it didn't grossly violate his religious beliefs to make it in the first place?"

"That doesn't mean anything. It's just flour and sugar. Why won't this bigot sell him a cake?"

"If I forced you to bake me a cake that said 'Make America Great Again' you'd object, right?"

"Of course I would. Trump is practically Hitler."

"Ok, don't you see how the same principle of compelled speech applies to the first cake?"

"That's totally different. Those gay dudes just want a normal cake."

So long as the cake represents things the person believes in, there's nothing unique about it in their mind and for some reason they cannot be made to see it's in any way symbolic or representative of a viewpoint not everyone agrees with. And when you realize people are incapable of making this distinction, to the point of total moral disassociation that allows for compelling speech from others that they would object to explicitly being done to them personally, you realize there's a viral strain of argument that could be used to justify subjecting people they disagree with to any number of abuses. It also seems the most powerful people in America are infected with this thinking. Liberal Justice Elana Kagan voted as she did on Masterpiece because she understood the baker was subject to overt animus, such as a Colorado civil rights commissioner calling the baker a Nazi, that made his punishment appear to be arrived at predjudically. But then the "just a cake" non-argument rears it's ugly head in the much discussed bizzarroland footnote in her concurrence:

As Justice Gorsuch sees it, the product that Phillips refused to sell here—and would refuse to sell to anyone—was a ‘cake celebrating same-sex marriage.’ But that is wrong. The cake requested was not a special ‘cake celebrating same-sex marriage.’ It was simply a wedding cake—one that (like other standard wedding cakes) is suitable for use at same-sex and opposite-sex weddings alike… And contrary to Justice Gorsuch’s view, a wedding cake does not become something different whenever a vendor like Phillips invests its sale to particular customers with ‘religious significance.’

I suspect Jordan Peterson hasn't thought all this through, and I'm not surprised he hasn't because the public debate has been so bad. But there are abundant reasons to suspect that if it were explained to him, he'd get it. The fact a Supreme Court justice's can't see something so obvious and essential to the First Amendment, after she was specifically tasked with puzzling it out for months, well, that should keep people concerned with preserving free speech up at night.

SOURCE






'About 60 Organizations' Are Considering a Lawsuit Against the SPLC Following $3M Nawaz Settlement

About time!

No fewer than 60 organizations branded "hate groups" or otherwise attacked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are considering legal action against the left-wing smear factory, a Christian legal nonprofit leader confirmed to PJ Media on Tuesday. He suggested that the $3 million settlement and apology the SPLC gave to Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation on Monday would encourage further legal action.

"We haven't filed anything against the SPLC, but I think a number of organizations have been considering filing lawsuits against the SPLC, because they have been doing to a lot of organizations exactly what they did to Maajid Nawaz," Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, told PJ Media on Tuesday.

Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the charity navigation organization GuideStar for defamation after GuideStar adopted the SPLC's "hate group" list. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In 2016, the SPLC published its "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists," listing Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, a practicing Muslim, as one such extremist. The left-wing group listed various reasons for including him, changing the reasons every so often, and even at one point mentioning that he had gone to a strip club for his bachelor party.

On Monday, SPLC President Richard Cohen extended his group's "sincerest apologies to Mr. Nawaz, Quilliam, and our readers for the error, and we wish Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam all the best." In settling the suit, the SPLC paid Nawaz's organization $3.375 million.

"This is a significant settlement," Staver told PJ Media. "3.375 million dollars, and it did not even go to litigation; it was a result of a demand letter."

Importantly, "the allegations that were at issue here were very similar to the allegations against the other groups," the Liberty Counsel chairman explained. "The SPLC promotes false propaganda, demonizes and labels groups they disagree with, and that labeling has economic as well as physical consequences."

The SPLC started as a group to oppose racist terrorism, and its first legal action targeted the Ku Klux Klan. In recent decades, the organization has begun marking mainstream organizations as "hate groups" on par with the KKK. Last year, 47 nonprofit leaders denounced the SPLC's "hate list" in an open letter to the media. The SPLC has admitted that its "hate group" list is based on "opinion."

Staver insisted that the settlement with Nawaz "will encourage further legal action." He suggested that the settlement "helps our lawsuit against GuideStar" and may encourage organizations that were considering suing the SPLC to actually file the paperwork.

"There are probably about 60 organizations that we're talking to — there's at least 60," Staver told PJ Media. He mentioned the group of 47 nonprofit leaders who denounced the SPLC last year, and said "that group has grown since then."

Furthermore, many of the "hate groups" attacked by the SPLC do not encourage hate or violence, but merely disagree with the left-wing organization's political views. Many — like the Family Research Council (FRC), the Ruth Institute, and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — merely stand for marriage as between one man and one woman. The SPLC has twisted 30-year-old arguments to smear these groups, and in one egregious case the group actually quoted as hateful the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Other organizations attacked by the SPLC also told PJ Media they are "considering their options" regarding a lawsuit.

"Truthfully, I have not been following the activities of the SPLC too closely," Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, an organization that lost its credit card processor, Vanco Payments, over the SPLC's "hate group" labeling last year, told PJ Media. "Pursuing our mission is more important than attempting to take on the behemoth of the SPLC."

"I must say, though, this apology to Mr. Nawaz has caused us to consider our options," Morse added, cryptically.

"We are reviewing all our legal options," J.P. Duffy, a spokesman for the Family Research Council, told PJ Media on Tuesday.

A spokesman for Prager University, another organization attacked by the SPLC, said that "at this point" the group had "no intention to sue," but they "reserve the right to change their mind as the situation evolves."

Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), echoed this trend, saying his organization is "evaluating all our options," including a potential lawsuit.

"It's appalling and offensive for the Southern Poverty Law Center to compare peaceful organizations which condemn violence and racism with violent and racist groups just because it disagrees with their views," Tedesco told PJ Media. "That's what SPLC did in the case of Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz, and that's what it has done with ADF and numerous other organizations and individuals."

"This situation confirms once again what commentators across the political spectrum have been saying for decades: SPLC has become a far-left organization that brands its political opponents as 'haters' and 'extremists' and has lost all credibility as a civil rights watchdog," the ADF senior counsel added.

Tedesco defended the good name of Alliance Defending Freedom, which SPLC falsely maligns as a "hate group." "With eight wins in the last seven years at the U.S. Supreme Court and hundreds of victories for free speech at America's public universities, ADF is one of the nation's most respected and successful legal advocates, working to preserve our fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, and conscience for people from all walks of life," he said.

SOURCE






Spain: Ground Zero for Europe's Anti-Israel Movement

The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an "Israeli apartheid-free zone." The move comes days after Navarra, one of Spain's 17 autonomous communities, announced a similar measure. In all, more than 50 Spanish cities and regions have passed motions condemning Israel. The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

The Valencian measure, introduced by the far-left party València en Comú, was approved during a plenary session of the city council on May 31. The motion, which commits the city to refrain from engaging in business contacts or cultural events with Israeli authorities or companies, aims at establishing Valencia as "a global reference for solidarity with the Palestinians."

The motion, which libelously describes Israel as an "apartheid regime," accuses the Jewish state of "colonialism," "racism," "ethnic cleansing," "tyranny," and "genocide."

The measure, which claims to reflect the "dignity, solidarity and justness" of the Valencian people, was introduced by Neus Fábregas Santana, a city councilor whose Twitter feed reveals an obsession with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

Santana works closely with a group called BDS País Valencia, the local branch of a worldwide movement trying to delegitimize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

BDS País Valencia is currently promoting a Spanish documentary about the Gaza Strip called "Gas the Arabs," a title that alleges, falsely, that the Jews in Israel are doing to the Arabs today what the Nazis in Germany did to the Jews during the Second World War.

An activist with BDS País Valencia, Mireia Biosca, said the motion in Valencia had three objectives:

"The first is the dismantling of the apartheid wall and the return to the borders of 1967. The second is the end of apartheid both in Palestine and in Israel, and the third is the right of return."

Biosca also said BDS País Valencia would work to prevent the Eurovision song contest from being held in Israel in 2019:

"There is a very clear line: first to ensure that states do not participate in the festival, and obviously a campaign to prevent the festival from being in Jerusalem. For me it is equally boycottable if it is decided that Eurovision will be held in Tel Aviv...."

A Madrid-based organization, Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), which is fighting the anti-Israel BDS movement in Spain, said that Valencia's motion was anti-Semitic and an incitement to hatred. It said it was studying whether to take legal action against the City Council of Valencia for violating the Spanish Constitution and promoting discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or national origin:

"The declaration is full of lies, manipulations and libels, whilst it calls for the city to formally adhere to the BDS movement and declare itself 'free of Israeli apartheid' (a known euphemism in Spain for Judenrein [free of Jews], where any perceived sympathizer of the Jewish State is demanded to publicly denounce the policies of the only democracy in the Middle East in order to be admitted to social, political, economic or civic activities in the municipality) ....

"We informed the local press of the illegality of the BDS campaign, detailing dozens of judicial cases won by ACOM in the Spanish Courts that proved the unconstitutionality of exclusionary measures."

ACOM has filed more than twenty lawsuits against provincial and town councils which have enacted boycotts of Israel.

Much of the BDS activity in Spain is being promoted by Podemos (translated in English as "We Can"), a neo-Communist party founded in March 2014 to protest the economic austerity measures put into place after the European debt crisis. Podemos received more than 20% of the vote in the national election held on December 20, 2015 and is now the third-largest party in Parliament.

Podemos head Pablo Iglesias and his deputy, Íñigo Errejón, served as advisors to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and have been accused of receiving more than €7 million ($8 million) from Chávez to fund their political activities in Spain. Podemos has also been accused of receiving funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iglesias has a long history of anti-Semitism: he has downplayed the Holocaust, describing it as "a bureaucratic and administrative decision"; compared the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw ghetto; and described Spanish police who apprehend illegal immigrants as being the same as SS guards.

Iglesias hosts a television program, "Fort Apache," which is broadcast on HispanTV, a Spanish-language cable television network owned by the Iranian government. He has been accused of using his show to repeat anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and tropes.

In a June 7 interview on RTVE, a leading state-owned television and radio broadcast network, Iglesias, said that Israel was an "illegal" country: "We need to act more firmly against an illegal state like Israel. Israel's actions are illegal. The apartheid policies of Israel are illegal."

València en Comú, the political party which sponsored the BDS motion in Valencia, is a local offshoot of Podemos. The motion was approved with support from Compromís, a coalition of Communist and left-wing nationalist parties, as well as the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), which recently took over the central government in Madrid.

BDS motions have also been approved in: Abrera, Alcoi, Alhaurín de la Torre, Artés, Badalona, Barberà del Vallès, Barcelona, Benlloch, Campillos, Casares (Malaga), Castrillón, Castro del Río, Catarroja, Concentaina, Córdoba, Corvera, El Prat, Gijón, Gran Canaria, La Roda Llangreu, Los Corrales, Madrid, Mairena del Aljarafe, Molins de Rei, Montoro, Muro, Navalafuente, Navarra, Oleiros, Olesa de Montserrat, Onda, Pamplona, Petrer, Ripollet, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Sabiñánigo, San Fernando, San Roque, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Sant Cebriá de Vallalta, Sant Celoni, Santa Eulària (Ibiza), Sant Boi de Llobregat, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Sant Pere de Ruidebitlles, Santiago de Compostela, Sant Quirze del Vallès, Seville, Telde, Terrassa, Trebujena, Velvez-Málaga, Viladamat, Viloria del Henar, Xeraco and Zaragoza, among others.

ACOM President Ángel Más explained the dynamics behind the rise of the BDS movement in Spain:

"The BDS is a global phenomenon that is born from the modern anti-Semites' acceptance of the improbability of defeating Israel through military confrontation or terrorist attacks. The objective is the same: the annihilation of the Jewish homeland, 'from the river to the sea.' But now, BDS tries to push the international community to condemn Israel as a pariah state and ostracize all those that support her: Zionists. Jews.

"The delegitimizers, as old-time bigots, mask their thuggery, presenting themselves as victims and hiding their true intentions. They appeal to public feelings against oppression or abuse and the sympathy for underdogs and suffering minorities.

"The BDS movement in Spain acquired its current virulence with the emergence of Podemos, a 'Chavist' far-left party financed by Venezuela and Iran. Podemos won 25% of the votes in Spain's 2015 local elections. Before those elections, BDS was a marginal confederation of small groups focusing on academic and cultural boycotts of Israel. The core group that formed Podemos had been active in the BDS initiatives for years, and hostility against Israel was a top priority in their political agenda.

"As Podemos gained control of the municipal governments in the main Spanish cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Cadiz, the anti-Israel movement had access to multiple economic, human and organizational resources. When those far-left groups occupied public institutions, they didn't distinguish between their own sectarian agenda and the government's agenda.

"Local administrations (provincial and municipal) formally joined the BDS movement and declared their territories 'free of Israeli apartheid.' In effect, Judenrein. Stickers were distributed to be exhibited in shops and offices, public companies were instructed not to work with Israeli firms or individuals and Spanish citizens suspected of being associated or sympathetic to the Jewish state were demanded to repudiate it publicly in order not to be excluded from social, political, economic and civic life.

"Podemos has driven over 90 such declarations in Spain in jurisdictions covering a population of over eight million people. Its plan was to create an oil spill of hatred reaching the majority of Spain in 18 months. This was an existential threat, and we had to act....

"No local boycott is too small to go unchallenged. BDS groups carefully manipulate the information reaching political decision makers, spend massive resources on media campaigns and are masters at social media intoxication. In general, pro-Israel groups are lagging behind in the application of analysis and action in those fields."

SOURCE






Trinity Western University Loses Religious Freedom Fight

In a 7-2 decision, the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled against Trinity Western University in their fight to open a law school, siding with the Law Society of British Columbia in its belief that LGBTQ+ rights trump religious freedom rights.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Richard Wagner, along with Justices Rosalie Abella, Michael Moldaver, Andromache Karakatsanis, and Clement Gascon stated “The LSBC’s [Law Society of British Columbia] decision not to approve TWU’s [Trinity Western University] proposed law school represents a proportionate balance between the limitation on the religious protections under s. 2 (a) of the Charter and the statutory objectives that the LSBC sought to pursue. The LSBC’s decision was therefore reasonable.”

TWU is an evangelical institute of higher learning that has multiple locations in Canada. The institution was founded by the Evangelical Free Churches of Canada and America in 1962 and was upgraded to university status in 1985.

In June 2012, Trinity Western submitted a proposal for a law school at their main campus in British Columbia. In April of 2014 the LSBC, however, in October of 2014, the LSBC reversed its decision based on a referendum of British Columbia’s lawyers. Trinity Western sued the LSBC for their decision and thus began a years-long legal battle that resulted in the Supreme Court of Canada handing down a decision in favor of the LSBC’s favor on June 15.

At issue in this legal dispute was Trinity Western’s “Community Covenant” which, among other things, prohibited “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

Justice Beverly McLachlin, who retired on Dec. 15, 2017 but was still on the bench in late November and early December of 2017 when Trinity Western’s appeal was heard, agreed with the majority decision, stating, “Where legislatures delegate regulation of the legal profession to a law society, the law society’s interpretation of the public interest is owed deference.”

Justice Malcolm Rowe also agreed with the majority, stating, “With the privilege of self-government granted to the LSBC comes a corresponding duty to self-regulate in the public interest. The LSBC was entitled to interpret its public interest mandate as including consideration of the effect of the Covenant on prospective law students. The fact that the Covenant is a statement of religious rules and principles does not insulate it from such scrutiny.”

Justices Suzanne Cote and Russell Brown disagreed with the decision, however, stating “Under the LSBC’s enabling statute, the only proper purpose of a law faculty approval decision is to ensure that individual graduates are fit to become members of the legal profession because they meet minimum standards of competence and ethical conduct. Given the absence of any concerns relating to the fitness of prospective TWU law graduates, the only defensible exercise of the LSBC’s statutory discretion would have been to approve TWU’s proposed law school.”

The full text of the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision including concurring and dissenting opinions, can be found here.

For its part, TWU mourned the majority’s decision, stating, “Until now, Canada has encouraged the rich mosaic created by the diversity of views, race, gender, and belief systems. Sadly, the Supreme Court has decided that this does not extend to a law school at Trinity Western University.”

Earl Phillips, executive director of what was going to be TWU Law School, said, “We feel this is a lost opportunity for Canadians, many of whom do not have affordable access to justice. There are only three common law schools in Canada that offer a course in charity law. The TWU Law School would have offered a specialty in charity law. Because Canada has the second largest charitable and non-profit sector in the world, this law stands to impact Canadians coast to coast.”
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Phillips further stated, “Without question, the Trinity Western community is disappointed by this ruling. However, all Canadians should be troubled by today’s decision that sets a precedent for how the courts will interpret and apply Charter rights and equality rights going forward.”

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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