The recent cancellations of Sean Feucht’s worship events in parts of Canada have led to discussions about freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Don’t evangelical Christians have just as much right to public events as anyone else?Maybe not.In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada issued the Trinity Western University decision that gave governments in Canada the option to discriminate against conservative Christian viewpoints..BC nurse suspended, fined nearly $94,000 over ‘I ♥ JK Rowling’ billboard.Trinity Western University (TWU), a private Christian university in British Columbia, wanted to set up a law school. This law school received all of the necessary approvals. However, the law societies of Nova Scotia, Ontario, and BC subsequently opposed the new law school because TWU required all students to abide by a Christian code of ethics (known as the Community Covenant) that prohibited sexual activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage.In those three provinces, the law societies denied accreditation to TWU’s law school. Since they receive the authority to grant accreditation from their respective provincial governments, the law societies acted as government agencies in this task..Court cases were launched in all three provinces over this matter, and the cases from Ontario and BC reached the Supreme Court. This was essentially a showdown between LGBTQ rights and religious freedom, and religious freedom lost hands down. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the law societies of Ontario and BC (again, acting as agents of the state) could legitimately deny accreditation to TWU’s law school because of the restrictions on sexual behaviour in the code of student conduct.In 2019, Derek Ross, the Executive Director of the Christian Legal Fellowship, wrote an in-depth analysis of the decision for an issue of the Supreme Court Law Review entitled “‘Intolerant and Illiberal’? Trinity Western University and its Implications for Charter Jurisprudence.”Some people have mistakenly described the issue as TWU trying to “ban” gay students from attendance, making this a simple case of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. But that was never the issue. LGBTQ students were welcome to attend as long as they were celibate during their program. After all, unmarried heterosexual students were also required to be celibate. .EDITORIAL: BC nurse's $94,000 fine shows Canada's free speech crisis.Nevertheless, the Supreme Court condemned the Community Covenant as “degrading and disrespectful” and potentially causing “significant harm” to LGBTQ students. It said that the requirement to abstain from sexual activity outside of traditional marriage could cause some gay students to “suffer harm to their dignity and self-worth, confidence, and self-esteem” and “experience stigmatization and isolation.”Ross argues that these kinds of statements indicate the Supreme Court was actually denouncing the Christian view of marriage itself. As he writes, “It is difficult to read these statements as objections to the Covenant only — instead, members of the Court appear to be expressing a moral condemnation of TWU’s religious beliefs themselves, namely, TWU’s religiously based conceptions of marriage and sexuality. The objection to TWU, it seems, is based not just on the Covenant but, more fundamentally, on the religious beliefs it reflects.”In other words, the Supreme Court seemed to be “expressing a moral condemnation” of the historic Christian view of sexuality and marriage. The Christian view of marriage was not on trial, but the court eagerly expressed its disapproval of that view anyway..It is important to remember that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a document that applies to the state, not private organizations or individuals. It is supposed to protect citizens from government interference. Federal, provincial, and municipal governments are not allowed to restrict citizens’ ability to believe, think, communicate, assemble, and so on. If the government does violate the protections of the Charter, the victims can assert their rights in court. The victim in this case was TWU, which had been denied accreditation of its law school by government agencies that disagreed with the university’s religious position on sexuality..EDITORIAL: Air Canada flight attendants choose greed over country.Yet, in its ruling, the Supreme Court evoked the ambiguous “Charter value” of “equality” as something the state had an interest in protecting. This was used as a justification for supporting the law societies’ denial of TWU’s religious freedom. As Ross explains, “The majority invoked the value of equality, rather than the right to equality guaranteed in section 15, because there is no Charter right (equality or otherwise) that can be exerted against a private organization like TWU. In essence, this approach subjected TWU, a private actor, to Charter scrutiny. But the Charter’s application is strictly confined to regulating and limiting state action; it is so confined to maximize the freedoms of private individuals and associations like TWU. TWU is supposed to be protected by the Charter, not restricted by it.”The Supreme Court also argued that permitting TWU to have an accredited law school would allow the university to force its beliefs onto LGBTQ students. But TWU wasn’t forcing anything on anyone, because attending the school is entirely voluntary. .Instead, as Ross points out, a government-approved morality was being forced upon the university: “The Law Societies enforced their moral framework on a religious community, requiring TWU to change its religious exercises so that non-adherents would feel comfortable joining it. The Charter was role-reversed — it restricted a private community’s religious ethics so that the state’s preferred ethics would prevail.”In other words, the Supreme Court turned the Charter on its head so that it could force its leftist views on an evangelical school. To put the matter succinctly, the issue before the Supreme Court was whether the government (the law societies) could legitimately violate TWU’s Charter-guaranteed religious freedom. And the Court said, yes, TWU’s religious freedom could be lawfully violated because the conservative Christian view of marriage contravenes progressive ideology..EDITORIAL: Prairie backbone: Sask, Alberta say yes to freedom, rest of Canada says no.When it comes to social issues, many of the Supreme Court justices are not so much neutral arbiters as they are culture warriors with the goal of achieving a “progressive” society. Thus, the TWU decision is an indicator of what can be expected in future rulings from the Court. So, can Sean Feucht’s supporters claim the Charter right of religious freedom to protect their worship events in Canada? The answer is not obvious. With the 2018 TWU precedent in hand, a judge could potentially rule that allowing a “MAGA musician” to perform in Canada would be a threat to the LGBTQ community, and therefore rightfully prohibited.That Supreme Court decision is like a dagger in the heart of religious freedom.
