Ontario bill to ban freedom of speech in LGBT ‘safety zones’.

A bill introduced last month in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Canada, would allow the attorney general to bring charges carrying fines of up to $25,000 against those who say the wrong thing within 100 meters of a location the attorney general has designated as a “2SLGBTQI+ community safety zone.”

Bill 94, titled the “2SLGBTQI+ Community Safety Zones Act,” is a dangerous piece of legislation that gives the attorney general unfettered and unreviewable discretion to designate a location as a safety zone, charge someone with uttering the wrong words within 100 meters of that safety zone, and seek a fine of up to $25,000. The bill does not even define what “2SLGBTQI+” means or includes, leaving it up to the attorney general’s interpretation.

The Problem with Gender Identity

The class protected by this legislation is made up of persons whose “internal sense of self” fits somewhere in an open-ended and ever-changing collection of categories. How is the attorney general supposed to know whether the requisite number of persons whose “internal sense of self” is (or once was) associated with one (or more) of these undefined (and evolving) categories is gathering (or has gathered) at (or has been seen at) a particular location?

Beyond these unknowns, there’s an even more basic problem. The bill requires the attorney general, in making a safety zone designation, to attach labels to persons. But gender identity is, by its own convoluted definition, derived from self-perception and individual experience; it cannot be imposed upon a person by someone else. So shouldn’t gender activists be denouncing this legislation?

The Unchecked Power of the Attorney General

Under this legislation, the attorney general has unlimited and unreviewable discretion to answer all of these questions — and many more besides —

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