(LifeSiteNews) — A growing number of public figures are criticizing Ireland’s proposed “anti-hate speech” bill, including Twitter CEO Elon Musk and political commentator Donald Trump Jr.
“Massive attack on freedom of speech,” Musk, 51, said of the legislation last week. “It’s insane what’s happening in the ‘free world,’” exclaimed Trump. Psychologist Jordan Peterson has also decried the proposal.
It’s insane what’s happening in the “free world” https://t.co/BXEJoR1ios
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 30, 2023
On Wednesday, April 26, Ireland’s Dáil – the lower chamber of Parliament – passed the bill by a vote of 110-14. Officially titled The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Act 2022, it is expected to pass the Senate later this month, where progressives hold a large majority.
Among other things, the bill strengthens a 1989 law to ensure legal protections for gender identity and sexual orientation. More specifically, it places heavy restrictions on “any intentional or reckless communication or behavior that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a protected characteristic.”
The son of pastor Artur Pawlowski could be facing massive fines and jail time after he preached Bible verses outside a drag queen story time held at a public library over the weekend.
Nathaniel Pawlowski was detained and ticketed on Saturday by Calgary Police Service (CPS) because he was preaching too “close” to the drag event, in an apparent violation of a new and oppressive bylaw.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski said that he was outside the event to “preach, read the Bible and just speak.”
Video of the incident shows Pawlowski along with his friend Deklan Friesen speaking to a crowd outside the library.
Calgary City Council last month passed a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that disallows “specified protests” both inside and outside all city-owned and affiliated public buildings. Mayor Jyoti Gondek put her full support behind the buffer zone bylaw.
Please tell Mayor Gondek that the bylaw violating Charter freedoms is both unjust and absurd
The bylaw means pastors or concerned parents protesting pro-LGBT events at public buildings are barred from getting within 100 meters of any such location.
Top constitutional lawyer John Carpay recently blasted Calgary City Council for going to “war” against Canadians’ freedoms by using bylaws to target people’s ability to protest events at public facilities, including drag queen performance directed at children.
In an opinion piece published on March 17 in the Western Standard, Carpay said “freedom of expression is meaningless if citizens are only allowed to say what’s approved by the government, or if expression is banished from public spaces.”
Pawlowski noted that his ticket has no penalty listed yet, as police must “review the evidence on me and that they will be stopping by my home to issue charges.”
His ticket does have a mandatory court appearance date. Each charge under Calgary’s bylaw carries a maximum fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski had asked the police officers if they would also be enforcing “the same law on to the other side with the Antifa protesters”, but nobody was served a ticket except for he and Friesen.
In June 2022, Calgary City Council, under its left-leaning Mayor Jyoti Gondek, amended the city’s bylaws to “specifically prohibit insulting or demeaning behavior, including unwanted sexual advances, or harassing anyone on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, gender identity or gender expression, among others.”
In February, Gondek vowed to use the bylaw to go after drag queen story hour protesters after some of the events were postponed by pro-family objectors.
In early March, fulfilling her promise, Calgary City Council then passed the bylaw that banned protesting against drag queen story hours or any other “LGBTQ” events held at public facilities.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Carpay noted that while there are limits to free speech, “Canadians have every right to express their views in public places, regardless of the content of the expression.”
He also wrote how a 1992 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Zundel “explained all communications which convey or attempt to convey meaning are protected by the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms], unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, a violent act) excludes protection.”
“The purpose of the Charter’s free expression guarantee is to promote truth, self-fulfillment, and political and social participation. That purpose extends to the protection of minority beliefs which the majority regards as wrong or false,” wrote Carpay.
According to Carpay, Gondek seems to “believe it is wrong or false to oppose drag queen story readings in public libraries.”
“She is entitled to express her views, but not to impose her views on others by effectively banning peaceful public protests through a so-called ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw,” noted Carpay.
There exists a “freedom of expression” which includes the “right” to choose “high-visibility locations to hold up signs or banners, sing or chant, hand out literature, gather signatures on a petition, and have a speaker get up on her soapbox,” continued the lawyer.
“Protests are often held at the locations where injustices (or perceived injustices) are actually occurring,” he added.
Christian pastor Derek Reimer was jailed and charged in early March for protesting a children’s drag queen story hour at a public library in Calgary.
Carpay wrote that the city council’s use of “coercive power to relegate peaceful protesters to obscure locations where they cannot be seen or heard,” amounts to “crushing a fundamental Charter freedom on which our democracy depends.”
“The point of protests is to be seen and heard,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that being forced to stand 100 meters away from high-visibility and high-traffic areas “reduces freedom of expression to near irrelevance.”
“Protecting entrances from obstruction is already taken care of by the Criminal Code, and does not require a bylaw that imposes up to $10,000 in fines and up to a year in jail for peacefully protesting less than the length of four swimming pools away from an entrance,” charged Carpay.
According to Carpay, the Charter’s protection for free speech applies to those at the receiving end of a person speaking out.
“Potential listeners who have the right to hear diverse points of view, and to decide for themselves what is true and false rather than having Mayor Gondek decide on their behalf,” said Carpay.
“Calgary’s ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw violates the rights of all Calgarians, speakers and listeners, and attacks diversity of thought and belief.”
Carpay noted that “repressive regimes always take great pains to ensure their subjects are kept ‘safe’ from ideas which the regime believes to be wrong or false.”
“In the past – and still today – those living in communist North Korea, national socialist Germany, theocratic Iran, Putin’s Russia, communist China and many other places have been kept very safe from ideas that the regime dislikes,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that in a “free society,” there is no way everyone can be “safe” from hearing one’s opposing views.
“The ‘safety’ which woke activists on Calgary City Council are promising is attractive to those who support children being exposed to drag queens at public libraries,” wrote Carpay.
“But beware of the erosion of freedom, because the demons of censorship cannot be controlled after their release.”
In addition to Carpay, the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) has also objected to the new bylaw, and has vowed to commence a legal challenge against the “unconstitutional” policy.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
MORE INFORMATION:
Pastor Artur Pawlowski’s son detained in Calgary for preaching against drag show – LifeSiteNews
Canadian constitutional lawyer rips Calgary law banning drag queen story hour protests – LifeSiteNews
Critics contend that the bill goes too far, and that it could result in the Catholic Church coming under fire from the government simply for defending its teachings on human sexuality and family life.
“As written, the law states that you can be prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned just for possessing material that could conceivably – in the mind of some functionary – be considered hateful if somebody else saw it,” Irish media outlet GRIPT has reported. “And if you don’t want to be convicted, you would need to prove that you did not intend to share it with anyone else.”
Niall McConnell, leader of Síol na hÉireann, a Catholic nationalist movement that publishes The Irish Patriot, expressed similar concerns.
“The ‘hate speech’ law has nothing to do with free speech. It is about silencing anyone in Ireland who criticizes the regime on abortion, mass immigration, or LGBT propaganda,” McConnell told LifeSiteNews.
While the bill has broad political support, some Irish lawmakers have sounded the alarm over the scope of the proposed law, with Senator Rónán Mullen accusing the legislation of paving the way for the prosecution of “thought” crimes.
Awaiting Seanad debate on flawed Hate Bill that (1) doesn’t define hate, (2) seems to penalise ‘thought crimes’ and (3) gives legal force to mad new definition of ‘gender’. Where are the civil liberties people, @ICCLtweet, @_IHREC, and @fiannafailparty @FineGael – all captured? https://t.co/tMO5c3LUhy
— Senator Rónán Mullen (@RonanMullen) April 30, 2023
For Musk, this is not the first time he has clashed with European efforts to stifle speech. In October of 2022, Thierry Breton, the European Union’s commissioner for the internal market, declared that Twitter would have to “fly by our rules” when it comes to permitted speech. Ireland’s left-wing president Michael D. Higgins called Musk’s purchasing of the platform a “form of dictatorship.” Twitter’s European headquarters are currently located in Dublin.
In an interview with a hostile BBC reporter last month, Musk was accused of allowing “hate speech” to go unabated on the platform. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Musk forcefully responded after the journalist failed to provide one example of hateful content.
The international outrage over the impending law comes just one month after U.S. President Joe Biden visited Ireland. Among his many stops was the famous Our Lady of Knock Shrine that commemorates an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. John the Apostle in County Mayo in 1879. Catholics criticized the shrine’s rector, Fr. Richard Gibbons, for welcoming Biden with open arms given his decades-long support for public policies antithetical to infallible Church teaching. A group of Catholics even prayed the rosary after his visit in reparation for the scandal he caused. Ireland voted to legalize abortion in mid-2018.
On December 8, 2020, Catholic clergyman Giacomo Ballini conducted a public exorcism of Ireland’s Dáil as well as of the Taoiseach’s Office. Hundreds of traditional Catholics were in attendance. “It is your duty as Catholics, as Irish, to pray for your rulers, for their conversion, so that they may accomplish their duty, that is, to lead us home to heaven,” he said at the time. “Whatever else they do that does not lead us to heaven is an act of tyranny.”