President's Message

confess to sometimes being moved to physical discomfort at reading the Family Circus or Lindor Reynolds or Gordon Sinclair in the Winnipeg Free Press (I would actually pay more for my subscription if this unholy triumvirate of offence was clipped out of the paper before it found its way into my mailbox, but I digress). Despite the splenetic reaction I can expect from reading columnists or opinions I do not like, I will dive in not only to challenge or confirm my preconceived notions of the drivel I anticipate, but because I can count on coming away better informed about how the other side thinks (or does not, in the case of, say, Ann Coulter).

Although we may all be advocates and activists in the cause of human rights and civil liberties, we are not all going to agree where to draw a line when a line needs to be drawn. The most recent striking example would be that of the Danish "Mohammed" cartoons. They have been variously labelled blasphemous, unnecessarily provocative, racist and inciting of hatred. Irrespective of their merits as political speech, they became the biggest free speech issue in North America in recent memory, and as many have pointed out, political correctness or over-sensitivity to an identifiable group won the day. In my own view, this is a lamentable failure of the media in North America which fell lockstep into the "we must not offend" camp. I am not going to win any prizes for the ability to point out the obvious that needlessly offending an identifiable group is rarely if ever a laudable aim; at the same time, when the possibility of offending some in an identifiable group is a necessary by-product of open debate, nothing is "obvious": acceptable free speech for some will become an unacceptable attack on religion for another.

A favourite singer of mine once said, "labels are for soup cans". Being labelled a civil libertarian does not guarantee that one will support the (re-)publication of the Mohammed cartoons or oppose forced drug-treatment, although many civil libertarians will be in agreement on those issues. We must be ready to accept that our peers stamped with the same label we apply to ourselves will not always be of like mind. As a gay man, I am expected in some quarters to accept without qualification hate crime or hate speech legislation although I do not. Plainly this does not mean that I support homophobic speech or acts, but no matter how vile or personally offended I might be by this kind of expression, I oppose the state's intervention on "my" behalf to suppress an individual's beliefs or expressions (accepting there are no absolutes and that not all expression is or should be protected). We are equally in error to presuppose all Muslims are violent extremists as to expect all Muslims to be opposed to the publication of the controversial cartoons.

One of the items that we discussed at our last board meeting was the recent idea of forcing drug rehabilitation of some kind on addicted youth. There are those that think that forcing medical treatment (de facto incarceration) on addicted youth is necessary to address the blight that is crystal methamphetamine; others, while recognising the debilitating effects of drug addiction, are adamantly opposed to forced medical treatment. A mature 16 year old can refuse life-saving treatment on religious grounds, but what if, "for their own good" the state mandates medical intervention? What of the individual's privacy rights or their rights to practice their religion without state interference? Where does one draw the line between objectively "bad" choices warranting state interference and those that do not? Not an easy question and one that civil libertarians and human rights advocates grapple with on a regular basis. We will carefully examine any legislation aimed at forcing medical treatment on Manitobans.

It is sometimes too easy for us to stick to opinions and content consistent with our often clumsy labels and within our comfort levels. We are likely to avoid approaching others' discomfort levels. I have never shied away from offering my (usually unwanted) opinion on the traditional sacred cows of religion or politics or Julia Roberts's inability to act. I have learned that discretion is the better part of valour, and the exercise of that discretion is key to playing well with others. Challenging assumptions and beliefs and opinions is part of our job as human rights advocates, even when we cross our or another's comfort line or contradict label-imposed expectations. How can our society debate or be informed on the merit of the expression contained in the Mohammed cartoons without seeing them? Once these cartoons became news, the media were responsible to reprint them-not out of provocation or to insult Muslims, but to inform all of us for the debate. Think of the advances in human rights and civil liberties due to necessary incursions into others' comfort zones. I have written many times before about how our positions are not always popular-often because we are inevitably crossing lines, and this has to be done to protect and enhance our rights and liberties. MARL will not needlessly offend or tilt at windmills, but we will similarly not be afraid to take a stance for fear of having people disagree with us. Thanks as always for your continued support.