The donkey in the bathtub
Culture, not the law, should determine what is right and wrong on the internet and in company.
Kathy Shaidle - September 24, 2008
Get an Alternative Ulster
Grab it change it it's yours
Get an Alternative Ulster
Ignore the bores and their laws
Get an Alternative Ulster
Be an anti-security force
Alter your native land
- “Alternative Ulster,” Stiff Little Fingers
Blogger and lawyer Bob Tarantino recently wrote a book called Under Arrest: Canadian Laws You Won’t Believe. “In Medicine Hat, it’s against the law to put a donkey in a bathtub.” That type of thing.
Of course, some laws on the books are more relevant to daily life, or are supposed to be, but they’re ignored. In jurisdictions across North America, it is still technically illegal for an unmarried couple to get a hotel room, rent an apartment together, or use contraception and sex toys. How’s that working out?
Sure, Lawrence v. Texas -- actually just a gay lovers spat gone extremely bad -- went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in the midst of the oral arguments, there were guys in Waco and Dallas getting busy regardless (I like to think some were making “oral arguments” jokes at the same time...). Gay activists and civil libertarians were thrilled by Lawrence, Christian conservative pundits were depressed, I probably made my “more K-Y for the slippery slope” joke -- but the average person, gay or straight, religious or atheist, never heard of the case.
Sometimes Law leads in the dance with Culture, and sometimes they switch. When it comes to Section 13.1 and Canada’s increasingly bizarre Human Rights Commissions, we should let Culture lead if we want to abolish one or both.
But I would think that, wouldn’t I? I’m a poet not a lawyer, after all. So I veer slightly from the “denormalization” strategy posed by my co-defendant, lawyer Ezra Levant: first, denormalize the HRCs by publicizing their missteps, mocking their ineptitude and scolding their decisions, primarily through the blogosphere but through the mainstream media too. Which is what I’ve been doing, with knobs on.
Second, says Levant, we have to “press legislators to act.” He writes:
“...abolish those commissions, and take those budgets and invest them in civics programs -- teaching Canadians, especially new immigrants, about the most precious and valuable human rights around, the ones we have inherited from 800 years of tradition in the free west. It is not a coincidence that the two recent complaints against free speech were filed by radical Muslim immigrants from Egypt and Pakistan. Basic civics classes -- not partisan political indoctrination, but a basic primer in the rule of law; fundamental freedoms; the equality of men and women; non-violent solutions to problems, etc.”
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