The passage by Canada’s House of Common of C-389, a bill to extend special criminal code and human rights protections to people with “gender issues”, i.e. men who think they are really women trapped men’s bodies and vice-versa, demonstrates how incredibly stupid the thinking in Canada on human rights has become. I’m sorry if some people find that offensive, but I just cannot think of a more accurate way to put it.
As a practical matter, the impact of C-389, if it passes the Senate and becomes law, will be both wide-spread and profound. Under it, restaurant or fitness club owners (for instance) will no longer be forced to provide trans-gendered people with their own separate toilets and/or change rooms. Instead they will be forced to allow trans gendered and transsexual patrons to use the toilets and change rooms of their choice, irrespective of the rights and dignity of everyone else using the facilities.
It’s as if the entire human rights movement in Canada has been seized by an uncontrollable desire to self-destruct.
And as usual, no-one is actually stopping to think through the ramifications of the new law.
Consider the man who wants nothing more than to view young women and girls nude. Right now it’s illegal for him to possess pictures of naked young girls. If C-389 becomes law, he’ll no longer have to take the risk – all he will have to do is claim that he is in therapy, preparing for gender-reassignment (sex change) surgery and bingo! he get’s a free pass to the girls’ change room at his local community pool.
Any parent who would dare to complain to the management would risk being the subject of a human rights prosecution, a process that could end in a fine of thousands of dollars and – worse by far – being forced to undergo “diversity training”. Parents like me, on the other hand, who would physically remove the culprit, kicking them in the rear on their way out the door, would not only be charged with assault, but with a hate crime too.
Of course, the government could require that transgendered Canadians carry a special medical certificate identifying them as women trapped in men’s bodies, which could be used to prove the “non-pervert” status of those loitering in girls’ change rooms, but that itself would be a violation of the new law, and besides, it would require managers to hire personnel to verify the status of everyone who wants in.
And then there are those who will have already had the surgery, virtually every one of whom – in one of life's uncomfortable little ironies – considers himself (herself?) to be a lesbian, that is to say, sexually attracted to women and girls.
It has been 139 years since the French political writer and philosopher Frederic Bastiat observed in his classic essay “The Law” that a free society cannot exist unless the laws are respected. “The safest way to make laws respected,” he wrote, “is to make them respectable.”
It’s simple advice that our lawmakers – regardless of political affiliation – ought to remember and adopt.