This Is Why Americans Should Be Grateful for the First Amendment – Canada’s Ruling Party Wants to Label Quoting Scripture as “Hate Speech”

​Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.”

Whether you’re religious or not, you have to admit he had a point. If the Bible were made into a movie, parts of it would have to be rated NC-17 for violence. The same could be said for some quotes from the Quran. Or consider Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita, in which Krishna prepares Arjuna to wage a bloody battle, inspiring the prince to ride forth in his chariot, shooting arrows and slashing with his sword.

The response of the faithful is that context is everything. Some of these passages are best understood as history, some as religious parable, some as spiritual metaphor – representing the battles we fight within ourselves.

For many contemporary critics of religion, however, things only get worse when someone preaches religious teachings on sexual morality and marriage. All the orthodox forms of the great world religions hold standards of morality that would draw the ire of a modern HR department.

You might cherish or deplore these religious views, but should those who espouse them be prosecuted for hate speech?

The governing Liberal Party in Canada thinks so.

It is backing a move in Parliament to remove an exemption for religious speech under that country’s “hate speech law.” The current criminal code in Canada includes the following exemption that politicians wish to expunge: “If, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief on a religious text.”

It is this exemption that the Liberals and their partner in government, Bloc Québécois, are seeking to strike from the law.

In the United States, under the First Amendment – which guarantees both free speech and the free exercise of religion – Americans can debate their views on religion without fear of prosecution. Any attempt to dictate either speech or theology is forbidden, even when others find the speech or belief offensive.

The efforts of Canadian politicians to criminalize religious speech are a recipe for an endless culture war between the government and Catholics, evangelicals, Muslims, and Hindus. The very idea of forbidding the advocacy of traditional religious standards highlights the danger of having a “hate speech” code in the first place.  
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Thank you, James Madison.

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