Freedom of speech but not freedom of religion".

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With both leading Liberals and Conservatives now calling for elimination of the censorship powers in the Canadian Human Rights Act, Parliament might soon get rid of this menace to freedom of expression. Yet faithful Christians should still beware: They could be victimized by a number of other laws that are no less incompatible with the rights of Canadians to freedom of religion.

For example, provincial human rights laws in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories also constrict freedom of expression for conscientious Christians. The latest victim is Stephen Boissoin, a part-time youth pastor. Last year, he was censored by an Alberta human rights panel for expressing his convictions on the sinfulness of same-sex sexual relations in a letter to the editor of his local newspaper. For this 'offence', the adjudicator ordered Boissoin to make a public apology to the complainant, pay him $5,000 in damages, and refrain from making any more "disparaging" remarks about gays and homosexuals "in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches or on the Internet."

Boissoin is appealing the ruling on the ground that it violates the freedoms of religion and expression in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Would the Supreme Court of Canada go along with this argument?

No one can be sure. The judicial activists on the Court are a law unto themselves. Time and again, they have flouted the separation of legislative and judicial powers, by arbitrarily changing the laws and the Constitution to conform with their personal policy preferences.

Regardless, even if all of the censorship powers in the Canadian and provincial human rights commissions were eliminated by legislative amendments or judicial fiat, faithful Christians would remain vulnerable to the hate crime provision in section 319(2) of the Criminal Code, which prohibits the publication of any statement that "willfully promotes hatred against an identifiable group."

Granted, section 319(3) of the code stipulates that no one can be found guilty of a hate crime under 319(2) "if, in good faith, he expressed or attempted to establish by argument an opinion on a religious subject." However, that's hardly reassuring inasmuch as judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada are all too apt to rule as they have in human rights cases, that the rights of Christians in section 319(3) are trumped by the alleged equality rights of homosexuals in section 13 of the Charter.

Apart from censorship, faithful Christians can get into legal trouble for refusing on religious grounds to provide a public service to some individual or group favoured in human rights law. Recall the plight of Scott Brockie, the Toronto print-shop owner and Evangelical Christian. In 2000, he was ordered by an Ontario human rights board of inquiry to pay $5,000 in damages to a homosexual complainant who was aggrieved by Brockie's refusal to print materials for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

The board ordained: "Brockie remains free to hold his religious beliefs and to practise them in his home, and in his Christian community.... What he is not free to do, when he enters the public marketplace and offers services to the public in Ontario, is to practise those beliefs in a manner that discriminates against lesbians and gays."

Earlier this year, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal likewise ruled that the managers of Christian Horizons, a non-profit organization that cares for some 1,400 developmentally handicapped persons, can profess the Christian faith, but had no right to fire a lesbian employee for violating her contractual promise to uphold the agency's lifestyle and morality code, which includes a ban on homosexual relationships. The Tribunal ordered Christian Horizons to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the complainant and eliminate the requirement that employees comply with its lifestyle and morality code.

Christian Horizons has complied with the unjust ruling. An appeal would probably have been futile.

For faithful Christians, the implications of these cases are clear: They remain free to profess the word of the Lord at home and in church, but those who act upon their religious convictions at work and in public could lose their jobs, their businesses and their freedom.

Such is the travesty of human rights in post-Christian Canada.

Rory Leishman is an author and a freelance columnist. Visit his blogs at www.roryleishman.blogspot.com and www.againstjudicialactivism.blogspot.com.