Censuring "homophobic hate speech"

A friend recently wrote to me, saying:

In his book, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), Pope Benedict XVI wrote, "Very soon, it will no longer be possible to affirm that homosexuality (as the Catholic Church teaches) constitutes an objective disorder in the structure of human existence" (p. 35). Interesting article on precisely that issue below.

Indeed. The article is by David Warren, entitled "Deafening Silence" (Ottawa Citizen, June 12, 2008). Warren begins by professing that the pen is ultimately mightier than the sword, that "political power passes away, that truths about God and man resurface, that human freedom is never fully extinguished." He continues:

This is a point worth recalling, as we head into a period in Canada when, owing to malice from an ideological camp, to cowardice on the part of our elected representatives, and to indifference on the part of the people, free speech and freedom of the press will disappear in Canada. Those who deviate from the officially-sanctioned lies of "political correctness" will emigrate, perhaps mostly to USA, or experience that peculiar form of internal exile -- of enforced silence -- that good men have shared in many times and places.

... As free speech disappears in Canada, one looks for instance not at the more celebrated cases of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, but at the much less publicized fate of e.g. Rev. Stephen Boisson, convicted by an Alberta kangaroo court ("human rights tribunal") last November for publicly expressing the Christian and Biblical view of homosexuality, on the say-so of an anti-Christian activist from his home town.

Rev. Boisson has now been ordered to desist from communicating his views on this subject "in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet" so long as he should live. He has been ordered to pay compensation to Darren Lund, the anti-Christian activist in question, and further to make a public recantation of beliefs he still holds.

... Among the spookiest aspects of these cases is the silence over, and indifference to them, on the part of journalists whose predecessors imagined themselves vigilant in the cause of freedom. As I've learned first-hand through email, many Canadian journalists today take the view that, "I don't like these people, therefore I don't care what happens to them." It is a view that, at best, is extremely short-sighted.

I've long asserted that one of the most formidable practical challenge the Church faces in our time is not women's ordination, a shortage of priests, or church closings. Rather, it is the lack of stalwart response to this problem, which almost nobody seems to want to confront.[Hat tip to Prof. E.E.]