By Bruce Walker
web posted July 14, 2008
The weak vital signs of free speech has been a hot topic lately. What is happening outside America is more frightening than what is happening within America. Mark Steyn in Canada faces legal harassment from “human rights” commissions for impugning, allegedly, Muslims. Reverend Stephen Boisson, also in our neighbor to the north, has been ordered to stop expressing his Biblically-based views of homosexuality “in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet.” Canada has language similar to our Bill of Rights, but Canadian ideologues and bureaucrats ignore any Canadian heritage of free speech.
Bridget Bardot has been fined again this June by French courts for objecting to the way Muslims treat animals. This was her fifth prosecution for the crime of saying what she believes. Bardot has been sentenced to prison, with the sentence suspended, for simply stating that Islam is cruel to animals. The state prosecutor has complained that the court needs to impose a harsher sentence on the starlet next time for saying what she believes.