In Northwest Territories, a landlord decided not to rent to a gay couple for the sole reason that they were gay, and he’s paying the price.  Watch for the usual suspects to add this to their “We are oppressed victims!” file for e-mail blasts and whatnot:

A gay couple in Yellowknife have been awarded $13,400 in compensation because a landlord would not rent them an apartment on the basis of their sexual orientation.

In a written decision issued this month, Northwest Territories human-rights adjudicator James Posynick ruled that William Goertzen did not give a justifiable reason for refusing Scott Robertson and Richard Anthony when they tried to rent the main floor of his Yellowknife house in May 2009.

Of course, the landlord explained that his reasons for breaking the lease were entirely paranoid and delusional in nature:

Goertzen, a journeyman lineman who attends a local Baptist church, said he instead put the rental back on the market because he feared he would suffer “‘undue hardship’ by punishment administered by God” if he allowed gay people to live in his building, according to the decision.

Goertzen said he believed “that same-sex relationships are ‘unnatural and against nature’ and ‘the Bible warns against being associated with such wickedness,” the decision states in part.

Basically, he’s scared of the monster under the bed, in the closet, in the sky, or wherever he imagines his version of God is [all of those places!], and thus would be putting a giant target on himself, so that the next time his Deity was a-lookin’ fer a fight, he’d see Goetzen, and right underneath him, a gay couple cooking dinner, and that was just too big a risk to take, you know?

He, of course, argued, just like American fundamentalist Christians do, that his religious beliefs were being violated, because in fundamentalist wingnuttia, “religious freedom” means that you should be able to hurt anyone who doesn’t share your weird beliefs, lest you run the risk of said beliefs being challenged in any way.

“I’d have to ask where are my rights … why can I not stand on my beliefs and what I believe in?” Goertzen told CBC News in July.

“They might think it’s discrimination against them, but I’m losing my beliefs and there’s definitely my religious convictions.”

But in his decision, Posynick said the right to religious freedom “is not unlimited” and Goertzen cannot justify evicting the couple on the basis that he was “following God’s word.”

Precisely.  Religious freedom ends when it starts infringing upon other people’s rights, and Canada is doing a better job living up to the ideals the United States espouses than we are.

After Exodus Global Alliance lost its application for charitable tax-exempt status in New Zealand, the blog Slap Upside the Head noticed that Exodus already enjoys fraudulent misuse of this status in Canada.

That prompted blogger Mark to ask a very simple question: How is it “charitable” for a U.S.-based religious organization to commit unprofessional acts of psychological abuse  against Canadian gay people?

We’d like to know the answer to a similar question: How is it “charitable” for such organizations to charge hundreds of dollars per day for this abuse?

According to Mark:

Charitable status can be revoked for one of three reasons: Voluntary revocation (unlikely in this case), Revocation for failure to file taxes (also unlikely), or revocation for a cause other than a failure to file. The latter is complicated, but states that charitable status can be revoked for “a failure to comply with the requirements of registration,” which may include the “public benefit test.”

According to Revenue Canada, claims of public benefit by any charity “may be [...] rebutted by concerns raised,” and there is definitely legal precedent of this.

Mark has thus created an action page from which Canadians may contact the Canada Revenue Agency and request reconsideration of Exodus’ charitable status.

Mark adds:

We’re looking for experts in the medical and psychological community to sign a common letter to send to the CRA attesting that Exodus is doing demonstrable harm in Canada. If you are, or know an accredited doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, please help us get in touch! Together, we’ll write a letter to send to both the press and the CRA.

We hope that some of our professional readers will contact Mark and offer to help with this common letter.

So, this exists:

Gay farmers in Canada have come out–and banded together in a social club where they can talk about crops and the weather, just like any other farmer, reported Canadian newspaper The National Post on July 27.

The Gay Farmers Club is one of a number of groups that operate under the aegis of Au coeur des familles agricoles (ACFA), an organization created to help Canada’s farmers with the pressures that modern life–along with soaring debt, international trade, and a gap between how people in other lines of work live their lives, and how farmers are tied–literally, and often without a break–to the land.

[...]

“We share personal stories, but mostly we discuss farming and agriculture,” one member told the publication. “It’s great because we face similar challenges as both farmers and gay people living in rural regions–and we don’t need to explain ourselves.”

I post this because it’s fun, but also because it just shows, yet again, that we are everywhere, and some of us are growing and preparing your food, so you should be nice.

Seriously, though, you always hear the “pro-family” crowd rail agianst “San Francisco valyews” and “East Coast lib’ruls,” and Peter LaBarbera likes to say that people in communities full of bigots should be free to make discriminatory, hateful laws against gay people, but really, we ARE everywhere, in every community. These are Canadians, so they’re obviously more protected than we are in the United States, but maybe one day we’ll get there.

South Africa GLAAD encourages TWO readers to write letters similar to the following, in your own words.

To: pret@international.gc.ca, Pretoria-im-enquiry@international.gc.ca, pm@pm.gc.ca, info@parl.gc.ca, SpkrOff@parl.gc.ca, BrisoS@parl.gc.ca, info@cpsa.ab.ca, ttheman@cpsa.ab.ca, bward@cpsa.ab.ca, kgardener@cpsa.ab.ca, kmazurek@cpsa.ab.ca, kreed@cpsa.ab.ca, jswiniarski@cpsa.ab.ca, jlwright@cpsa.ab.ca, cmccann@cpsa.ab.ca, keby@cpsa.ab.ca, rdoyle@cpsa.ab.ca, lmoyles@cpsa.ab.ca, kstruski@cpsa.ab.ca, mstuffco@cpsa.ab.ca, sbarron@cpsa.ab.ca, msorochan@cpsa.ab.ca, dsunde@cpsa.ab.ca, bleisen@cpsa.ab.ca, kinsen@sen.parl.gc.ca, TTlali@justice.gov.za, CMsibi@justice.gov.za, deputyminister@justice.gov.za, info@foreign.gov.za, molobisk@foreign.gov.za, Edriese@foreign.gov.za, Bassonh@foerign.gov.za, Mashabaned@foreign.gov.za, Hattinghl2@foreign.gov.za, Rankhumisep@foreign.gov.za, sepanyamogalen@foreign.gov.za, Sitholer@foreign.gov.za, Montwedip@foreign.gov.za, jacobsd@foreign.gov.za, debeerj@foreign.gov.za, egale.canada@egale.ca, Coordinator@publicservicepride.ca, ayronvillegas@gmail.com

To whom it may concern,

It is with mixed elation, sorrow, anger and shame that LGBTIQ South Africans, their friends and family learnt of the arrest of Aubrey Levin of Calgary, Canada. Levin has been described as South Africa’ own Dr. Mengele. Many are happy that he has finally been caught for something seemingly related to his alleged activities in South Africa – but there remains a great deal of unfinished business left behind. If the reports about him can be believed, it would seem that Aubrey Levin literally got away with murder!

He was not prosecuted in South Africa. He disappeared to Canada before any such charges could be brought against him and did not appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has since avoided coming to South Africa because of the alleged risk that he may be charged. Justice might still not have been served in South Africa.

The charges he is currently facing in Canada are not nearly sufficient to make up for his alleged activities committed at 1 Military Hospital and the alleged heinous violations of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender conscripts, conscientious objectors and others whom the Apartheid government considered undesirable. The charges he might face are as chilling as any which would be levelled against his Nazi namesake, who disappeared without a trace, never to be brought to justice.

We ask that Aubrey Levin not be allowed to go unpunished for his alleged crimes. We ask that he face the full might of Canadian law for his crimes there – and the full might of South African law here. (Read More)

Dr. Aubrey Levin, aka the Dr. Josef Mengele of apartheid South Africa, may have finally run afoul of the law.

He was arrested in Canada last week for allegedly abusing a Canadian man at his practice. It seems that old habits die hard. “Doctor Shock,” as he was called back in the old days, used to torture gay and lesbian military personnel to try and turn them straight. Amazingly enough, the folks at your local friendly neighborhood “ex-gay” ministry have been trying to that for decades, too – and haven’t been having much success either. Most intelligent people already know that it is nigh impossible to “straighten” what was made “skew” in the first place, to paraphrase an Afrikanerism. For those not smart enough to bluff their way out of Levin’s grasp, (shouting “Praise the Lord, I’m healed!”) he allegedly performed forcible sex-changes on them – and according to some sources, many of these were intentionally botched. (Read More)

A year after it helped launch the Uganda genocide legislation, Exodus is teaming up with Robert Knight, Matt Barber, and an attorney who affirmed child abduction by her ex-gay activist client. Joining with NARTH’s leading political activists “therapists” at Liberty University’s School of Law, their objective is simple: Convince the public that the Constitution’s Bill of Rights cannot survive so long as LGBT people have any rights at all.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers will headline a two-day conference and symposium Feb. 12-13. The events will criticize sexual honesty, reject mainstream psychiatry, deny the existence of sexual orientation, and assert that conservative Christians’ rights are incompatible with the rights of sexual and religious minorities.

According to the Liberty Counsel, a Christian Right legal-attack squad, the February 12 conference is titled “Understanding Same-sex Attractions and Their Consequences.” On February 13, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?” Liberty University was founded by fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, and it is operated as a veritable police state where no dissent from the late Falwell’s ideology and lifestyle are permitted.

Chambers will tell fundamentalists — as he has done many times before — that same-sex attractions are caused by bad parenting and abuse, that public honesty about one’s orientation is sinful, and that recognition of the equality of religious and sexual minorities is demonic. (Read More)

The prime ministers of Britain and Canada last week protested, in the strongest terms, Uganda’s plan to execute its sexually active LGBT and HIV-positive citizens — and to imprison their families, doctors, clergy if they fail to turn in patients and loved ones to the police.

The two nations’ top leaders implied that Uganda might lose foreign aid and membership in the Commonwealth if it proceeds.

Compare these condemnations to the official statement of the highest-ranking U.S. executive-branch official, Eric Goosby. He is the head of the U.S. State Department’s foreign-aid program for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, known as PEPFAR.

As Truth Wins Out pointed out on Friday, Goosby said:

My role is to be supportive and helpful to the patients who need these services. It is not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation. But I will engage them in conversation around my concern and knowledge of what this is going to do to that population, and our ability to stop the movement of the virus into the general population.

Update: Goosby’s statement is much softer and more generous to Uganda than a U.S. embassy officer’s prior statement:

“If adopted, a bill further criminalizing homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda,” the embassy’ public affairs officer Joann Lockard said in an email. “We urge states to take all necessary measures to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests, or detention.”

Americans must take urgent action to let the State Department know that it IS their job to prevent the misuse of taxpayers’ HIV/AIDS dollars to slaughter gay people, enrich evangelicals, and deny Africans access to condoms.

Please write letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding a hold on Uganda’s PEPFAR funding until strict human-rights, privacy, and free-speech controls can be imposed upon all PEPFAR aid. PEPFAR aid must not be given to sectarian religious interests, especially those with violent and inhumane intentions.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
(202) 647-4000

Please THANK Rep. Tammy Baldwin for her support and urge her office to continue fighting against The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 by e-mailing Amber Shipley:

Amber.Shipley @ mail.house.gov

Please THANK Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for her support via phone call or letter and urge her to continue using her position in the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs to hold Uganda accountable.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
2470 Rayburn H.O.B.
Washington, DC 20515-0918
(202) 225-3931

As Uganda continues to move toward passage of a death penalty against that nation’s LGBT and HIV-positive citizens, Canadian minister of state for foreign affairs Peter Kent said earlier this week that “Our position is that the proposed Uganda law is reprehensible, vile and hateful and it’s appalling that such legislation would be brought to the parliament of a commonwealth democracy.”

According to MambaOnline:

Kent said that his government would communicate its stand on the issue at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which is taking place in Trinidad and Tobago this week.

“At the Commonwealth summit, we’ll convey Canada’s position that if that law is in fact passed, Canada would consider it unacceptable and a gross infringement of human rights in Uganda,” he said.

Revised 2 p.m. Aug. 10:

Tim Hortons has issued the following statement:

Recently, Tim Hortons was approached in Rhode Island to provide free coffee and products for a local event, as we do thousands of times a year across Canada and the United States.

For 45 years, Tim Hortons and its store owners have practiced a philosophy of giving back to the communities in which we operate. As a company, our primary focus is on helping children and supporting fundraising events for non-profit organizations and registered charities.

For this reason, Tim Hortons has not sponsored those representing religious groups, political affiliates or lobby groups.

It has come to our attention that the Rhode Island event organizer and purpose of the event fall outside of our sponsorship guidelines. As such, Tim Hortons can not provide support at the event.

Tim Hortons and its store owners have always welcomed all families and communities to its restaurants and will continue to do so. We apologize for any misunderstanding or inconvenience this may have caused.

Please thank Tim Hortons graciously for its statement — but politely ask them to clarify whether any local store owners will provide support to the antigay rally.

U.S. contact
Canadian contact

A new documentary, The Cure for Love, explores a discreet network of ex-gay ministries throughout Canada.

According to Xtra.ca, “The documentary follows the lives of people on the inside of the movement: a pastor who runs an online youth forum, a robotics engineer who considered suicide, and Brian and Ana ‚Äî two people who married last year after they ‘reoriented.’”

The documentary, produced by Christina Willings, premieres Saturday, April 12, on Canada’s Global TV.

Addendum: Here’s an interview with Christina Willings, published by the National Film Board of Canada.