William Whatcott is likely not the sort of person you’d want to enjoy a beer with.

On the other hand, he could ultimately be the catalyst for a Canadian society where you are actually free to speak your mind, regardless of what your mind is telling you.

Whatcott, you may know, is the 43-year-old anti-homosexual crusader behind the current Supreme Court hearing on Canada’s hate speech laws. (The court has reserved its’ judgment on the case.)

The appeal to the Supremes was brought by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, flowing from a 10-year-old case where Whatcott was distributing some nasty pamphlets in Regina and Saskatoon referring to homosexuals as “sodomites” and arguing there is a conspiracy to corrupt young people in Saskatchewan’s schools.

After four complaints, the Commission ordered Whatcott to pay, a decision overturned last year by Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal. The case revolves around Section 14 of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, which prohibits speech that “exposes or tends to expose to hatred, ridicules, belittles, or otherwise affronts the dignity (of an identifiable group).”

Or, in other words, you can’t hurt people’s feelings – or at least, those people deemed by human rights czars and the courts to be particularly vulnerable – without expecting retribution.

And there, of course, is the problem with hate speech. We already have a definition of hate crime in the Criminal Code, so why do we need another one in human rights laws? Worse. If you’re charged under the Criminal Code, you have a right to a full and fair defence and the assumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Not so with human rights tribunals. The entire process is stacked against the person charged. To begin with, human rights commissioners, almost without exception, get their appointments because of their adherence to the fielty of the whole notion that human rights trumps other considerations.

Second, those charged must pay their own way, while those doing that charging get everything looked after by the state. It’s a Star Chamber process that has no place in Canada, or any other democracy, for that matter.

That’s what was so laughable about a June, 2009 article in the Globe and Mail written by Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Accusing critics of human rights commission and tribunals of “manipulating information and activities around rights cases ... to further a new agenda...” without, of course, offering a single concrete example to support her claim, she claimed that human rights commissions are paragons of “fairness and efficiency” where “all parties are protected by the rules of natural justice...”

Nonsense. The whole process is weighted against those who are subjects of a complaint and any fair reading of human rights legislation shows that to be true.

Meanwhile, back to the

Whatcott case, Cynthia Pet-National ersen of the gay rights groupAffairs Egale Canada, one of 20 interveners in this important case, told the seven judges that, “I’m here to tell you that we’re not feeling the love.” And there, dear hearts, is the rub.

Why should she “feel the love”? She certainly shouldn’t be subjected to personal threats or physical abuse, but why should the law – any law – make it illegal for somebody to hate you or hate what you’re doing or what you stand for?

It’s one thing to tolerate different lifestyles and different approaches, but there’s no reason why we all have to applaud.

Millions of Canadians have moral qualms about homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Are they all bigots? Are they all a threat to a civil society? Should they all be forced to hold their opinions to themselves by an overbearing state apparatus? I think not.

Whatcott, in fact, by using hateful language, does his cause more harm than good, but it says here that, despite that, he should be entitled in a free society to hand out his pamphlets and howl at the moon if that’s what he feels he must do.

Despite broad claims to the contrary, there is precious little evidence that hate speech really hurts anything beyond people’s feelings – hardly enough to trump a far more important right to free speech.

Or, as Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer Andrew Lokan told the court, “Everybody can point to a speech they find offensive. But human rights tribunals and judges have found it notoriously difficults to say what does and doesn’t cross the line when dealing with subjective concepts such as ‘hatred,’ ‘ridicule,’ ‘belittle’ and ‘dignity’.

“Allowing the Whatcotts of the world to hand out their flyers, then countering them with all the reasons why they’re wrong, is a much better approach in a free and democratic society.”