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Justice

Canadian court decides that referring to drag queens as ‘groomers’ is not protected speech

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6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

‘It is reasonable to conclude that the suggestion that … drag performers are ‘groomers,’ merely because of their sexual or performance identity, is defamatory,’ Ontario Superior Court of Justice Tracey J. Nieckarz

A Canadian court ruled that calling a drag queen a “groomer” does not fall within a province’s current protected speech laws in a ruling that could potentially lead to a larger decision that possibly makes it illegal to call men who dress as women, or vice versa, any term deemed offensive.

The court ruling, dated December 14, is in response to a case between Rainbow Alliance Dryden et al v. Webster.

Ontario Superior Court of Justice Tracey J. Nieckarz ruled, “It is reasonable to conclude that the suggestion that … drag performers are ‘groomers,’ merely because of their sexual or performance identity, is defamatory.”

Nieckarz in essence ruled that calling drag performers “groomers” or other names is not protected under Ontario’s anti-SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation) laws.

The case in question is between a man named Brian Webster, who is a Thunder Bay, Ontario, Facebook blogger, and a local “drag king” who filed a defamation suit against him with the help of the town’s Pride organization, Rainbow Alliance Dryden (RAD). Also involved in the case is Egale Canada, an LGBT group funded by the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The plaintiffs went after Webster via a court battle regarding his Facebook post in which he accused RAD of sexualizing children to recruit them into the LGBT community. In September 2022, Webster posted screenshots on his Facebook page of a CBC news report about RAD drag performance events being planned in Dryden, Ontario, and the surrounding area.

Webster wrote, “ASK YOURSELF WHY THESE PEOPLE NEED TO PERFORM FOR CHILDREN? GROOMERS. That’s the agenda. Just look at the face of the one child in the photo. Tells you all you need to know.”

The plaintiffs argued that Webster’s post resulted in a rash of “hateful” public comments directed at the group.

Webster filed an anti-SLAPP motion to try and have the case dismissed. Ontario’s anti-SLAP rules offer a recourse for defendants to use in lawsuits by bringing forth to have a judge dismiss the case if the case is determined to be a SLAPP, which is a case “intended to silence critics who speak out on matters of public interest by burdening them with the cost of a legal proceeding.”

“The Defendant’s comments went well beyond that, perpetuating hurtful myths and stereotypes about vulnerable members in our society,” the judge wrote. “Webster’s argument that he was accusing the CBC of grooming has no merit based on a plain reading of the post.”

The court found that Webster’s comments were defamatory and that calling drag performers “groomers” could cause harm to their reputation.

After Webster’s anti-SLAPP motion was dismissed, the plaintiffs are now able to proceed with legal action that could eventually result in a ruling that could ban calling drag kings or queens “groomers” in Canada.

Drag queen/king story hours in public places have been on the rise in recent years. Indeed, the drag queen story hour phenomenon traces its 2015 origins to a collaboration between LGBT activist group RADAR Productions and radical feminist author Michelle Tea in San Francisco, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.

South of the border, American lawmakers have introduced legislation to protect children from drag performers. This is not the case in Canada, where children remain vulnerable to attacks from LGBT activists, relying only on parents and concerned citizens to safeguard their innocence.

There has been public pushback to exposing children to LGBT ideology. Pastor Derek Reimer of Calgary, Alberta, was recently charged for protesting a children’s drag queen story hour at a public library. While he was in jail,  his van was vandalized with anti-Christian and Satanic messages.

Reimer is currently fighting his trespassing charges for silently praying in a municipal building in protest of drag queen story times.

Protests against drag queen story times in Calgary led to city officials adopting bylaws banning protests of such events.

According to “Gays against Groomers” in a posting from June 1, “there is NO PRIDE in the sexualization, indoctrination, and mutilation of children.”

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Crime

Biden’s ‘preemptive pardons’ would set ‘dangerous’ precedent, constitutional scholar warns

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From LifeSiteNews

By Bob Unruh

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned that preemptive pardons ‘would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.’

An expert who not only has testified before Congress on the U.S. Constitution but has represented members in court cases is warning about Joe Biden’s speculated agenda to deliver to his friend and supporters preemptive pardons.

It is Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, who wrote, “After years of lying to the American people about the influence-peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son, Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.”

There has been much speculation about those preemptive pardons from Biden, who lied about allowing juries and courts to determine the outcomes of son Hunter’s criminal gun and tax cases, flip-flopped and pardoned him.

Hunter Biden could have been ordered to jail for years for his felony gun convictions and his guilty pleas to felony tax charges.

However, Joe Biden handed him a get-out-of-jail free card, then followed up with hundreds and hundreds more commutations and pardons to a long list of those with criminal convictions.

The activity triggered a rash of speculation about those preemptive pardons, and Turley explains what’s going on.

“Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy, end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries.”

Thus, the talk of preemptive pardons, but Turley said it wouldn’t work out.

“Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses,” he said.

He noted if Biden delivers those pardons, “he would fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting ‘prospective’ or ‘preemptive’ pardons to political allies. Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants ‘success [to be] my revenge,’ Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.”

He explained there’s politics all over the scheme.

“After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests,” he wrote. “The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of preemptive pardons averted it. It is enough to preserve the narrative in the face of a stable constitutional system.”

But there will be a cost to such a “political stunt,” he said.

“Preemptive pardons could become the norm as presidents pardon whole categories of allies and even themselves to foreclose federal prosecutions. … It will give presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors, and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every president to pardon himself and all of the members of his Administration.

“We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.”

He noted that in the past, Bill Clinton pardoned both family members and political donors.

“Yet, despite that history, no president has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading,” he said. Promoters of the plan, he said, “would prefer to fundamentally change the use of the pardon power to maintain an apocalyptic narrative that was clearly rejected by the public in this election. If you cannot prove the existence of the widely touted Trump enemies list, a Biden pardon list is the next best thing.”

Reprinted with permission from the WND News Center.

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Business

‘Source Of Profound Regret’: Firm Pays Half Billion Settlement To Avoid Criminal Prosecution For Fueling Opioid Crisis

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Adam Pack

A consulting giant that helped fuel the United States’ deadly opioid epidemic agreed to pay a massive settlement to avoid criminal prosecution, according to court papers filed Friday.

McKinsey & Company, an international management consulting firm that advised Purdue Pharma to “turbocharge”  sales of Oxycontin during the height of the opioid crisis, entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) that will require the firm to pay a $650 million settlement over five years.

A former senior McKinsey employee also pleaded guilty to an obstruction of justice charge for destroying records detailing the consulting giant’s work for Purdue.

The McKinsey settlement is the latest in a string of lawsuits seeking accountability from corporations and consulting firms for contributing to the opioid crisis.

The epidemic, created in part from the work of Purdue and McKinsey to market OxyContin to millions of Americans, has taken more than 500,000 lives and left a trail of devastation in its wake, particularly in parts of rural America.

“McKinsey schemed with Purdue Pharma to ‘turbocharge’ OxyContin sales during a raging opioid epidemic — an epidemic that continues to decimate families and communities across the nation,” U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy for the District of Massachusetts, who sued McKinsey alongside an attorney for the Western District of Virginia over the firm’s consulting work for Purdue, wrote following the settlement. “Consulting firms like McKinsey should get the message: if the advice you give to companies in boardrooms and PowerPoint presentations aids and abets criminal activity, we will come after you and we will expose the truth.”

“We are deeply sorry for our past client service to Purdue Pharma and the actions of a former partner who deleted documents related to his work for that client,” the consulting firm wrote in a statement following the settlement. “We should have appreciated the harm opioids were causing in our society and we should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma. This terrible public health crisis and our past work for opioid manufacturers will always be a source of profound regret for our firm.”

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