Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Ezra Levant vs. Free Speech

As anyone following the "Ann Coulter in Canada" farce knows, her primary supporter in the Great White North is a conservative commentator named Ezra Levant. He's mostly known as an exile from the Conservative Party, as well as defending his "right" to reprint the inflammatory cartoons depicting Muhammed the Prophet as a terrorist.

When the provost of the University of Ottawa politely but firmly reminded Ann Coulter, that her usual hate rhetoric is illegal here, Levant was one of those accusing the provost of hate speech himself -- just because Coulter is a conservative -- and has filed a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, despite the fact that the hates its very existence. Sensing hypocrisy yet?

Anyway, a short time ago, an amateur stand-up comic in British Columbia was taken to that province's HRC, for yelling at a lesbian couple that was talking during his act (and if you didn't already guess, it's alleged that he used homophobic slurs). Levant, you guessed it, says that this isn't an issue, and the case has no merit.

So let's recap: it's okay to print sacrilegious and racist cartoons of Muslims (I know he says it's about free speech, but when he prints a cartoon depicting Moses or Jesus in the same light, then I'll buy that claim); it's okay to scream slurs at a lesbian couple in a public place; but God forbid that you remind a hatemonger, that we don't take kindly to her saying things like "we should kill all Muslim leaders and force the people to convert to Christianity", or "Canada's lucky we allow them to exist on our continent".

When this chucklehead comes to the HRC, defending America's answer to Osama bin Laden, I hope they throw him out on his ass.

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