Tolerance and intolerance

Tolerance of deviance and intolerance of Christians

BILL C-41, COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE by guest columnist Rory Lieshman

Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews who remain true to the historic tenets of their faith should beware: They are coming under ever more militant attack from pagans.

On March 8, members of a radical feminist organization, Le Collectif Autonome Feministe, set a new precedent for anti-Christian extremism in Canada. To celebrate International Women's Day, they desecrated Mary Queen of the World - the historic cathedral in downtown Montreal.

According to The National Post, the only newspaper in the country to pay any significant attention to the story, the pagan thugs overturned flower pots, defaced some pictures with soiled tampons, threw condoms around the sanctuary and spray-painted the slogan, "Neither God Nor Master," in foot-high letters on the main altar. "They came in yelling things against religion," relates Sister Rejeanne Poulin, an eyewitness to the attack. "They said they were claiming the right to abortions and freedom of speech."

Montreal police arrested seven people - four women and three men - for taking part in this desecration and charged them with the relatively minor offence of unlawful assembly. So lenient a charge for so shocking a hate crime is a scandal.

The most alarming aspect of this outrage for Christians is the complacency of the Montreal media. La Presse and the Montreal Gazette buried the story on their inside pages. Le Journal de Montreal, a tabloid with a bent for sensational news, paid no attention to the desecration of the cathedral.

Likewise, editorial writers in the French media ignored the shameful incident. In an opinion piece last Saturday, Gazette Editor, Allan Allnutt, belatedly acknowledged that his newspaper, "blew the coverage" of the church protest. "We'll cover the next one a great deal better," he promises.

That's small comfort to Montreal Christians, especially as Allnutt continues to play down the gravity of the crime committed at Mary Queen of the World. Suppose the cathedral had been a synagogue. Would there have been much angst and calls for action?

"Perhaps not," Allnutt opines. "Especially if the demonstrators at the synagogue were mostly Jewish women, marching into an Orthodox synagogue throwing tampons and screaming obscenities because the women among them couldn't become rabbis."

Orthodox Jews might well condemn such complacency. Like their Christian counterparts, they have been singled out for ever fiercer attack, because they uphold the fundamental tenets of natural and divine law, including the bans on fornication, adultery, sodomy, euthanasia and abortion.

On Tuesday, gay rights demonstrators in Los Angeles targeted Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the popular radio talk-show host and outspoken Orthodox Jew. In an attempt to pressure Paramount Studios into dropping plans to bring Schlessinger to television this fall, the pickets held up placards proclaiming, "Human rights should be paramount."

How ironical, but typical of gay rights zealots. According to their twisted understanding, freedom under law amounts to, "Human rights for me, but not for thee."

In Canada, autocratic judges and human rights commissioners betray the same homophile bias. In one ruling after another, they have shown scant regard for freedom of religion.

Liberal Christians and Jews do not have to worry. Having conformed their thinking to the latest patterns of the secular world, they are safe from persecution.

Indeed, some trendy clerics such as Bruce McLeod, the former Moderator of the United Church of Canada, have joined the persecutors. He testified against Scott Brockie, an evangelical Protestant and Toronto printer, who was hauled before a human rights board of inquiry because he refuses to print material promoting the practice of homosexuality. McLeod reminded the board that the practice of homosexuality is no longer considered sinful by the United Church.

Naturally, the board found against Brockie. Edward Tompkins, president of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, hailed the ruling as, "a mark of an increasingly tolerant society."

In a sense, Tompkins is right: Our society is increasingly tolerant of deviance, even as it is increasingly intolerant of people who uphold traditional morality. It's got to the point that traditional Christians and Orthodox Jews are no longer secure in their religious freedom - not even in the sanctuary of their own churches and synagogues.