The Coming Dictatorship of Relativism

From the soft tyranny to the north aka, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Canuckistan, the fine and distinguished gentleman Bob Ferguson calls for the state to make Catholicism illegal and/or determine Catholic doctrine. You think I’m exaggerating? Here are the money quotes (and the audio link for the knee-jerk “it’s a pro-life site he’s linking to” reaction):

Catholicism should be illegal:

Then it would be illegal to require a particular marital status as a condition of employment or to exclude women from the priesthood.

The state should decide Catholic teaching:

Of course the Vatican wouldn’t like the changes, but they would come to accept them in time as a fact of life in Canada. Indeed I suspect many clergy would welcome the external pressure.

Religion, after all, is SO dangerous. Particularly when people, like, believe it.

Religion is important in our lives, but it can become a danger to society when people claim that the unalterable will of God is the basis for their opinions and actions.

I understand that this is just a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commentary, not a government official or policy. But it nevertheless chilling as an indication of where the intellectual center of gravity is in a country that many American liberals admire, some more than their own (Michael Moore, the “Queer as Folk” writers). The very softness of speech, the reassuring “not a frothing nut” tone also invites it to be taken seriously. The CBC led into the piece with blandly favorable introductory chatter provided here on the CBC’s transcript, which also has the address, for those without audio. Best I can tell, Ferguson is not a regular CBC commentator, but since CBC is state-run and Canada has some pretty draconian “hate speech” laws, the fact this was considered fit to run constitutes at least some amount of government endorsement — as legitimate opinion, within the bounds of acceptable discourse.

Since Canada already has taken, under the guise of the state’s hate speech laws and various profession-regulating bodies, to legal punishment and marginalization of Christians (and liberal favorite Sweden is even jailing ministers), it’s impossible not to see a double standard at work here and get, if not a whiff of the ovens, at least the clean-scrubbed smell of Soviet psychiatry wards.