Sorry we're late posting this, but today, May 31st was a very special day for Canadians who have, or would like to have if the Liberals would pay for the surgery, the appurtenances mentioned in this speech by Pam Damoff, Liberal Member of Parliament for a riding in the Greater Toronto Area.
We must apologize for not drawing your attention to this Very Special Day until now, its fifth anniversary. Honestly, we didn't know until Agent 6 alerted us this morning. Only in Canada you say? Pity!
Footnote: It's interesting that Ms Damoff and her party neglected the opportunity to decry the barbaric cultural practice beloved of the Prophet and his followers, i.e. female circumcision, aka female genital mutilation. Guess it's not an issue in those parts of Canada which haven't yet been overrun by the Islamist hordes.
Walt's nominee for Canadian hero of the year is Carolyn Burjoski, then a teacher in the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB), who was silenced in 2022 after expressing to the board her concerns about library books with content supporting gender transitions (read: sex change operations) for young people.
Board Chair Scott Piatkowski halted Ms Burjoski's presentation at a WRDSB meeting for comments she rnade which he alleged violated the Ontario Human Rights Code. He later described the teacher's comments as "transphobic" and "questioning trans people's right to exist."
Ms Burjoski fought back -- a shining example of the kind of "resistance" which is Walt's theme today. In May 2022, she filed a defamation lawsuit against the WRDSB and Chairman Scott. The board responded by bringing a motion to have the suit thrown out. In this short video, Ms Burjoski speaks about what happened.
On November 23rd of this year, Mr Justice James Ramsay of the Ontario Superior Court dismissed the WRDSB's motion, and ordered the Board to pay Ms Burjoski's costs in the amount of C$30,000 (nearly $22,000 in real money).
Judge Ramsay ruled that Ms Burjoski's lawsuit
against the school board should be allowed to proceed, and... yes, there's more... called the
comments made against her "defamatory." Said the judge, "They accused her of breaching the Human Rights Code, questioning the right of trans persons to exist and engaging in speech that included hate. She did not do any of those things.
"The chairman of the board acted with malice or at least, with a reckless disregard for the truth. He had made an embarrassingly erroneous and arbitrary decision to silence a legitimate expression of opinion and he was widely criticized for it. It is not a stretch to infer that, realizing that, he tried to justiff himself with the public by assassinating the plaintiff s character."
Furthermore, the judge said, human rights legislation "does not prohibit public discussion of anything," and "what happened here should not happen in a democratic society."
Ms Burjoski's legal victory shows that parents who want to speak up at school board meetings to voice their concerns need not fear being silenced. After this excellent start to her ongoing legal battle to hold the WRDSB accountable, Ms Burjoski will now continue with her defamation suit.
But she will need your help.
In legal affairs such as this, the process is the punishment. The stress of the litigation forced her to go on leave from her teaching position, and the money she's supposed to get from the Board doesn't even cover her actual costs so far. Ms Burjoski.
But Ms Burjoski believes she must press on. Her victory (so far) shows that parents who want to speak up at school board meetings to voice their concerns need not fear being silenced. Click here to visit her website, and please lend whatever support you can. And tell her Walt sent ya!
In "Choosing one's identity", Walt suggested -- or meant to suggest -- that there was something unnatural, or just plain WRONG, about making yourself out to be black when you're white, or a woman when you're a man. Who are we, I meant to ask, to try to change our identities from the ones God gave us?
One reader has had the temerity to ask where I get off saying changing one's identity is somehow contrary to God's law? OK, I'll tell you where...
Deuteronomy 23:1 - An eunuch, whose testicles are broken or cut away, or yard [= penis] cut off, shall not enter into the church of the Lord.
That's the Douay-Rheims translation. The King James Version (and yes, I do have one), reads: He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.
A little more colourful, isn't it... Either way, the Word of God says clearly that if you're born with that dangly bit between your legs, you'd best leave it there.
