Freedom of Speech, Homosexuality: Pick One

From November 30, 2007 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

A former pastor and the Christian group he belonged to broke Alberta's human rights law by writing an anti-gay letter published in a Red Deer newspaper, a panel ruled Friday.

In 2002, Stephen Boissoin wrote a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate that compared gay people to pedophiles and drug dealers. It was published under the headline "Homosexual agenda wicked."

Darren Lund, a high school teacher in Red Deer at the time, complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission that the letter was a hate crime after a gay teenager was attacked in the city.

On Friday, a commission panel decided Boissoin and the Concerned Christian Coalition of which he was executive director violated human rights law because the letter likely exposed gays to hatred and contempt.

"I find that there is a circumstantial connection between the hate speech of Mr. Boissoin and the CCC and the beating of a gay teenager in Red Deer less than two weeks following the publication of Mr. Boissoin's letter," wrote panel chairwoman Lori Andreachuk.

I rather doubt that if atheists wrote letters to a newspaper that compared Christianity to Naziism that the Alberta Human Rights Commission would have a problem with that.