In an article for Canada’s National Post at the end of February, I warned of a growing intolerance north of the border to people of faith. The prevailing mindset, I suggested, goes something like this: “If you must be religious, then for heaven’s sake do it in the privacy of your own home, where no one else has to see or hear you; religion has no place in the public sphere.” In so far as the religious “fail to conform to a set of approved public positions,” I argued, they are now “expected to be silent.”
As if to prove my point, a group of protesters prevented pro-life MP Stephen Woodworth from giving a public lecture at the University of Waterloo this past Wednesday. Woodworth, a Christian, recently brought forward a private member’s motion in Parliament calling for a study to determine at what point a child becomes a human being. Canada is the only Western country in the world where no legal restrictions on abortion exist; our Criminal Code states a child gains rights as a human being only after it has fully emerged from its mother’s womb. While Woodworth’s motion failed, it has nevertheless reignited public discussion of life issues in Canada.
Woodworth was scheduled to speak on the topic at the University of Waterloo this past week, but protesters interrupted him partway through his lecture. What about freedom of speech? Well, according to at least one of the protesters, Woodworth doesn’t get any: “That kind of speech, that kind of facts, are not acceptable,” the protester is quoted as saying in the National Post. He also shouted, “Who do you think you are, trying to impose your bigotry, your views on society through your Christian monotheistic faith?”
The implication is clear: Religious views are not welcome in the public realm. Be silent or we will silence you.
The University of Waterloo has condemned the protest, but the fact that it happened at all is evidence of a society which is growing increasingly intolerant of public expressions of faith.
[You can see raw footage of the protest here.]
March 16th, 2013 | 11:19 am
While this is a serious issue it did cause me to wonder why the left is incapable of public debate without recourse to some sort of papier mache idolatry, in this case a man dressed as a Vagina.
March 16th, 2013 | 11:59 am
I am reminded that a bigot is one who will not tolerate a view other than their own, and that is usually describes our accusers.
March 16th, 2013 | 11:59 am
It seems to me more than anything a failure on the part of campus security. (“Even though the space was booked properly, campus security refused to intervene on the grounds that the protesters had an equal right to free speech, say the organizers.”) The campus police should be told no one who invades and disrupts such an event has an “equal right to free speech,” and students who take part in such “protests” should be disciplined and if necessary expelled.
March 16th, 2013 | 1:09 pm
David, the failure of campus security reflects the disposition of the bourgeois types who are in charge of higher education.
March 16th, 2013 | 2:44 pm
“That kind of speech, that kind of facts, are not acceptable,” the protester is quoted as saying in the National Post.
This single quote is a microcosm of the bizarre universe in which modern secularists and their media enablers coexist. Only facts convenient to their cause–carefully selected and closely scrutinized–are permitted mention; all others are strictly verboten.
I sincerely hope the next secularist-themed lecture is interrupted in similar fashion. Perhaps then we will learn if the university’s policy on such intrusions is consistent or selective.
March 16th, 2013 | 4:32 pm
. . . it did cause me to wonder why the left is incapable of public debate without recourse to some sort of papier mache idolatry . . .
Thomas Linken,
Please let’s not engage in caricatures. The left is perfectly capable of public debate without loony props, just as the pro-life right is capable of public debate without waving huge grisly posters with pictures of aborted babies. Canadian college students do not represent the entire left. I don’t know why anyone would take this incident as any kind of evidence of anything. Stephen Woodworth remains an elected member of parliament, while some rude and immature students made idiots of themselves and hopefully will pay a price for it. The balance of power has not shifted from Stephen Woodworth to student protestors. In my youth (in the 1960s and 1970s) it was quite common for college students to shout down government representatives (or others) when they tried to speak on campuses justifying the war in Vietnam. This didn’t bring an end to warmongers or wars in the United States, and while I don’t wish to altogether dismiss Mathew Block’s concerns about the role of religion in public debate, the incident he reports on is a minor one, and will be even less significant if the University of Waterloo take reasonable actions as a result of their investigation. Not that it makes a great deal of difference, but it looks as if Stephen Woodworth had a rather small audience to begin with.
March 16th, 2013 | 4:44 pm
David, the failure of campus security reflects the disposition of the bourgeois types who are in charge of higher education.
Art Deco,
Could you explain what you mean by “bourgeois types”? I never understand this kind of rhetoric.
We will see what the university does after their investigation. It seems to me no university can reasonably take the position that if a group with a particular view books a room and schedules an event, a group that comes in and shouts down the speaker, takes over the podium, and causes the cancellation of the event is merely exercising its right to free speech. If there had been a demonstration and a counter-demonstration in a public space, the campus police would have been correct not to take sides. But if the university concludes that they acted correctly in this case, they deserve whatever additional chaos ensues.
March 16th, 2013 | 5:03 pm
It’s selective, without a doubt.
March 17th, 2013 | 1:17 am
“Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.” – Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
Welcome to proscription, Canadians.
March 17th, 2013 | 2:41 am
The University of Victoria (Victoria, BC) Catholic Students’ Association (CSA) is currently challenging a shameful motion passed by the UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) Board of Directors that attempts to restrict the CSA’s ability to function as a club on campus.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the CSA have submitted a letter requesting withdrawal of the UVSS motion.
Summary and copy of the UVSS motion to suppress free speech and religious freedom:
http://catholicsacristan.blogspot.ca/2012/12/free-speech-and-religion-under-attack.html
March 17th, 2013 | 4:40 pm
Secularists espousing tolerance are like communists, who were invariably in favour of freedom of speech BEFORE the revolution.
March 17th, 2013 | 5:12 pm
Could you explain what you mean by “bourgeois types”? I never understand this kind of rhetoric.
The bloody deans, David, who are not wage earners.
March 17th, 2013 | 8:01 pm
Not that it makes a great deal of difference, but it looks as if Stephen Woodworth had a rather small audience to begin with.
Not that it makes a great deal of difference, of course, but you thought you might mention that.
+ + +
Actually, shout-downs like this have become distressingly common on campuses of what used to be universities. So have been confiscations or burnings of alternative student newspapers. (“It’s a free newspaper, right? So we took a lot of copies for our friends.”)
March 17th, 2013 | 9:07 pm
Here is a more complete, 14-minute video of what went down. It starts getting interesting at the 1:20 mark.
March 17th, 2013 | 9:56 pm
This group of “protesters” have done this before ad have others on campus. This kind of misbehavior is intended to shut down speakers who show-up but also to discourage people from bothering to show-up to listen to the speakers in future.
Hence the supposed small audience. The disruptive tactic gets some results — short and long term — and so the inept security policies rewards the continued use of this tactic.
March 18th, 2013 | 6:55 am
@David Nickol
I don’t know why anyone would take this incident as any kind of evidence of anything.
Well, no single occurrence can by itself establish the existence of a trend, which sort of goes without saying. But one reason one might be extra concerned is that Canada has pretty poor support for free speech against political-correctness-monitors (aka “Human Rights Commission”), for whom truth or intent are not a defense, and in whose “court” the complainants incur no costs while the defendants/respondents have to bear their own. And note that the implied line of thought of these “protestors” is really just that of the commission.
It strikes me as incredible, in the literal sense of the term, that campus security for a university would need to be informed that presentations are not subject to being shut down willy-nilly by shouting protestors. It’s hard for me to emphasize how naive your comment is on this point. It’s simply not possible to believe that a university security department would actually have as a general rule of operation that any protestors can shut down any speech at any time, so long as they can make sufficient noise.
March 18th, 2013 | 9:01 am
Joe Z,
The only thing that strikes me as more incredible than campus security believing they should do nothing when an official campus event is disrupted is that it is university policy that campus police should allow anti-religious or pro-choice groups to disrupt religious or pro-life events but not vice versa. My guess is that the campus police misunderstood their role. If there had been a public pro-life demonstration, and pro-choice counter-demonstrators came along, then it would not have been the job of campus police to take sides. Both sides would have a right to air their views. But in this case, the students who booked the room for the event had a right to expect campus police to protect the integrity of the event. The first duty of the police would be to make sure nobody gets hurt, but if they can expel the protestors and let the scheduled event continue, then that is their duty.
March 18th, 2013 | 9:17 am
The bloody deans, David, who are not wage earners.
Art Deco,
Is this a Marxist analysis?
March 18th, 2013 | 10:53 am
A study “to determine at what point a child becomes a human being” is an interesting proposal. What, exactly, would be studied? It cannot be a “scientific”, given that “human being” is not a scientific construct, but is rather a philosophical/metaphysical concept, going far beyond empirical, materialistic scientific inquiry.
March 18th, 2013 | 12:12 pm
Shaun Rieley writes: ‘…“human being” is not a scientific construct…’
Perhaps you would prefer the term “homo sapiens”? And if we can’t know when an individual is a “human being” without the intervention of philosophy, does that make each of us susceptible to being labeled “not a human being” because someone’s philosophy has been worked into law?
March 18th, 2013 | 3:08 pm
David Nickol: “I don’t know why anyone would take this incident as any kind of evidence of anything.”
This incident is merely yet another example of a long, long string of incidents providing evidence and proof of the terrible destructiveness and hypocrisy of liberal leftism.
I don’t know why anyone would want to plunge their head into the ground like an ostrich, and not want to face the cumulative evidence of the stench of secular liberalism.
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