Originally posted to a Canadian authors’ list, in response to Bill C-10.
Is there any possibility that this fear of “offensive” stuff is in part because the government would not wish to be party to a human rights (HRC) complaint?In that case – instead of denying funding – they should look at their legislation. Who is administering it, and how? To what purpose?I belong to a confessing Christian writers’ list where we discussed all this, and the consensus is that we don’t need protection from hate propaganda or material denigrating an identifiable group, even though (as people who must sign the Apostle’s Creed in order to belong) we are definitely an identifiable group.So we hope no one is doing that on OUR behalf. (We do have a problem with imbalance, but that can be corrected without censorship.)
But many of us are VERY concerned about the Human Rights Commissions’ recent efforts to get involved with censoring publications.
Ezra Levant, for example, writes about an attempt to block Web sites, by a former employee and frequent complainer to the human rights commission:
http://ezralevant.com/2008/03/richard-warmans-attempt-to-blo.html
I myself have no use for anti-Semitism or child porn or anything similar, but as a journalist, I would not be able to report if the government prevented access to Web sites in order to see if allegations are true. So I am glad they didn’t.
He also mentioned one complainant’s threats against public libraries that stock books the complainant disapproves:
http://ezralevant.com/2008/03/ontario-needs-a-warmans-law.html
(Perhaps a book is bad or ridiculous. But if I can’t get hold of it, I would have no idea. One reviewer called my OWN most recent book the probable worst he would read all year. Another reviewer said he tried and tried and tried, and just couldn’t even read it because it was so darn bad. So? If you take a stand on anything, that happens. Can’t please everyone.)
I realize that people are going to have vastly different opinions about the activists in many controversial issues. But it seems to me that a question is in order for our government: Is one reason you don’t want to fund “offensive” productions the fact that you don’t want to take heat to which you willingly subject writers and editors and publishers?
Cheers, Denyse
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The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary (San Francisco: Harper 2007)
Search inside: http://tinyurl.com/yo6b6r
Book’s blog: The Mindful Hack http://mindfulhack.blogspot.com/
By Design or by Chance: The Growing Controversy on the Origins of Life in the Universe by Denyse O’Leary (Augsburg 2004)
Search inside: http://tinyurl.com/2un7tg
Book’s blog: The Post-Darwinist: http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com
~ DIOGENES: MARK STEYN “backhands the Brits for their capitulation to political Qur’ectness” …. (offtherecord)
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A Swift Sunrise 