Barred: Christian lawyers are the new racists
If your university does not hold with gay marriage, don’t look for a legal career in eastern Canada.
by Lea Singh
Late last month, the law societies of Ontario and Nova Scotia voted against recognizing the validity of law degrees granted by the fledgling Trinity Western University School of Law in Langley, British Columbia.
What does this mean? Students who graduate from those law schools cannot be admitted to the bar in Ontario or Nova Scotia. Without any further evidence, they are assumed to be so bigoted that they cannot be allowed to practice law in these provinces.
Why? There is only one reason: because Trinity Western University explicitly does not approve of gay marriage. TWU is a Christian institution with a Community Covenant whereby students voluntarily pledge that they will abstain from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”
TWU is fully within its rights to have this policy; it is on constitutional grounds and no law society is attacking it directly. But, despite the supposed freedom of religion, TWU is now being ostracized. Clearly, among upper-crust professionals, support for gay marriage has come to be viewed as obligatory to the point of being a litmus test of whether admission among their numbers will be allowed at all.
How far we have come in such a short time. Back in 2005, before same-sex marriage became legal in Canada, supporters of traditional marriage still had the perceived backing of the majority, and our views were treated with (at least feigned) respect and consideration. Less than a decade later, defenders of traditional marriage are being shunned as equivalent, for all intents and purposes, to racists of the old American South.
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