3 July 2015
The Canadian Press today reported that the Law Society of Upper Canada will
decline to recognize prospective graduates from a yet-to-be-built law school in
British Columbia. This refusal was upheld in court. The causes of
this refusal call into question the validity of the law society’s cartel power
for the practice of law in Ontario.
The purpose of creating the law society in Ontario may have
been to start a private drinking club, but the justification for its cartel
power was to protect the public from the unscrupulous and the unprofessional
and to otherwise protect the reputation of the practicing lawyer in
Ontario. The justification of cartel power did not include being used for
anti-Christian repression.
The prospective new law school dares to be different: it
dares to require its law students to abide by Christian norms. One would
think that requiring of its students to abstain from gossip, obscene language,
prejudice, harassment, lying, cheating, stealing, pornography, and drunkenness
would be the sort of character-building effort that any law society would
encourage for members in training. The practice of law requires
knowledge, skill, and character, after all.
But the school also proposes to exclude “sexual intimacy
that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”
There is much to be commended about requiring such an abstinence in a
prospective lawyer, as among other things it recalls that law used to be
practiced by Christian monks. The costs of law school being what they
are, the martial exception would only be enjoyed by a few.
The Law Society of Upper Canada has, apparently, a low
opinion of the ability of LBGTQ persons to restrain their sexual impulses, and
it seeks to indulge the favor of such persons. The Law Society held that
“LGBTQ persons may attend, but they must….in essence disavow not only their
beliefs but,…, their very identity.” With this opinion, the Law Society
holds that LGTBQ persons cannot be believing Christians. It also holds
that the denial of sexual intimacy is a denial of LGBTQ identity, even as the
same denial to a heterosexual is not a denial of their identity.
LGTBQ behavior is not to be restrained, even though heterosexual intimacy
can be restrained.
The best legal minds in Ontario must have been engaged in
better paying work when this matter was discussed at the Law Society, and
upheld in court. However, that such an opinion could be the basis for
denying beforehand the quality and merit of the graduating students from the law school is not only prejudice at its worst, it calls into question the
justification for granting the law society cartel power in deciding who can
practice law in Ontario. Such power is supposed to protect the public,
but in this case it is being used as an agency of repression of Christianity.
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