Her mama say one day she's gonna live in America

Another case of the heavy hand of government using its full force to crush the free speech and religious freedom rights of Christians.

Must be in some despotic state like North Korea, right? Cuba? China? Saudi Arabia?

Sadly enough, as David Warren reports this affront to liberty is happening much closer to home:

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.

Meanwhile, Fr Alphonse de Valk, editor of the magazine Catholic Insight, is being prosecuted by a gay rights activist in Edmonton, for having upheld both sides of the Catholic teaching on homosexuality in the pages of his magazine over more than a decade: that homosexual behaviour is sinful, but that we are nevertheless to love the sinner.

That case, in which, as ever, all of the expenses of the complainant are met by the taxpayer, will drag on for some time before the inevitable guilty verdict is delivered, and the punishments to Fr de Valk and his colleagues are meted out. While the case drags on, the small magazine, which exists without state subsidies or significant advertising, on the dime of its several thousand loyal Catholic readers, is being driven towards bankruptcy by the cost of maintaining its own legal defence. These are costs they would not be eligible to recover, even if they won at tribunal.

Warren goes on to note that it's only a matter of time before such Canadian dissidents face a choice of surrendering their precious freedoms or seeking refuge elsewhere. America has long been home to refugees from war torn lands of strife and oppression. As Saint Paul remarked on earlier in the week, people have streamed to America from Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa in search of political and economic freedom. Now add Canada to the list of places that people flee to be free.