Christian coalition fined $5,000 for anti-gay letter
Last Updated: Friday, June 6, 2008 | 6:40 PM ET
CBC News
The Alberta Human Rights Commission has fined a Christian group $5,000 for an anti-gay letter that was published in a Red Deer newspaper.
The panel ruled in November that the Concerned Christian Coalition and its former executive director Stephen Boissoin broke Alberta's human rights law because the letter likely exposed homosexual people to hatred and contempt.
In 2002, Boissoin wrote a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate that compared gay people to pedophiles and drug dealers. It was published under the headline "Homosexual agenda wicked."
'We're going to look at whatever means are available to us to appeal it, because it's unjust and it's certainly not in the spirit of the charter.'—Jim Blake, Concerned Christian Coalition
Darren Lund, a high school teacher in Red Deer at the time, filed a complaint that the letter was a hate crime after a gay teenager was attacked in the city.
Panel chair Lori G. Andreachuk handed down the fine on May 30 and ordered the Concerned Christian Coalition to stop publishing disparaging remarks about homosexuals and to remove such comments from its current websites and publications. She also ordered the group to give Lund a written apology.
"I think it's reassuring that our government has taken a stand that, in fact, there are limits to free speech and when people are threatened or when people are vulnerable that's one of the good limits," Lund said Friday.
Jim Blake, chair of the Concerned Christian Coalition, said he still feels the decision goes against the rights to freedom of religion and speech. He said legal advice that the group refrain from appealing the original decision against it was ill-advised.
"So I can't speculate on our next course of action other than we're going to look at whatever means are available to us to appeal it, because it's unjust and it's certainly not in the spirit of the charter."
