Canadian Thought Police

Censorship is no longer the exclusive purview of our American neighbors. A Canadian court ruled this week that a public school teacher had no right to make remarks critical of homosexuality.

I know what you are thinking, we don't want teacher's spouting bigotry in the classroom, right?

The British Columbia Supreme Court said on Wednesday that Christian teacher Chris Kempling's freedoms were not violated when he was suspended for letters he had written to a newspaper.

(Emphasis is mine) Yeah, that's not a typo. The teacher was suspended for writing a letter to the editor. He didn't say anything in the classroom, he was just using his purported free speech rights.

This sends shivers down my spine. I find it completely intolerable that anybody could lose their job for expressing a set of controversial beliefs in the local paper. This is not even a case where the speech is terribly offensive, many people have religious beliefs that cause them to be discriminatory. I don't agree with them, but I defend their right to speak.

If a teacher can't write a letter to the paper and keep his job, then free speech essentially does not exist in this country.