Charter protection of religious rights -- don't count on it!

Politicians and jouralists are naive to think that religious rights have been, let alone will be, protected under the Charter.

If you ask a religious person how they view their faith, they would tell you it extends deeply into their lives, and informs their day-to-day conduct. Their religion extends beyond the rites and ceremonies of their respective religious organizations, and in fact is primarily practiced outside the four walls of the house of worship they attend.

The courts' view is the opposite -- they see religion as something practiced inside the four walls of a religious institution. And that appears to be the scope of religious behaviour that they are prepared to protect. Based on the Liberals' mischievious reference question, the courts have effectively declared that religious rights are longer rooted in the rights of individual Canadians, as the Charter explicitly states, but in the rites of religious organizations. Truncated religious rights better fit the secular judges who seem to totally lack any comprehension of the pervasive nature of religion.

If the nature of religion is defined by Charter judges and not by the religion itself, then the Charter judges become, in effect, gods over religion and they become threats against the very religious freedoms they swore to protect. The question is not, "will religious rights be protected by the Charter?", it is, "who will protect the religious from over-reaching, Charter judges?".

But do we have any actual evidence that this will, or has happened? Plenty!

The Charter did not protect the PEI bed-and-breakfast operators who choose not to open their B&B to two homosexual men; it did not protect Scott Brockie, the Toronto printer who declined to print propaganda for a pro-lesbian organization, and it did not protect the BC teacher, Chris Kempling, who lost his job simply for stating in a letter to a newspaper that "homosexuality is not something society should celebrate".

Anyone of good sense and goodwill will acknowledge that religious rights have not been protected by the Charter; in the hands of hard-left, intolerant judges, they have been undermined by it.