Hopefully the editors of the St. Albert Gazette are not moved to comply with the hasty suggestions of Jesse Popowicz in a recent letter ("Columnist views are damaging", May 25, 2019). And hopefully Popowicz will – in time – come to understand why the views expressed in that letter are, in fact, far more dangerous than the things which the letter decries as damaging.
(We might also hope that Popowicz will, in time, also come to realize that casting those who hold differing views as "not intelligent or empathetic enough to understand" is both insulting and serves to undermine a point that might otherwise be made in the same statement.)
Popowicz seems confused as to what both facts and rights are. The two are not the same, though facts do inform how we understand rights. The facts of biology, for example, are that even prior to birth, the unborn child is a distinct, living organism of the human species, not merely an extension of its parent's body. This, in turn, sets up the central tension of the abortion debate: do the economic and educational interests – or personal automony – of an adult human trump the fundamental right to life of an unborn human? And it is important that we have this discussion, given what hangs in the balance.
The same is true of e.g. the debates about LGBTQ+ rights. While we haven't seen this as much in Canada, in the country to the south there have been several notable court cases in which LGBTQ+ rights have come into conflict with other fundamental human rights, such as the freedom of belief and the freedom of association. And it is important that these discussions take place too, as should always be the case when we are attempting to determine the reasonable limits of competing rights.
Indeed, Popowicz's own letter urges the Gazette to take actions against another fundamental right: that of free expression. Popowicz would no doubt prefer that a certain viewpoint on key social issues be made the inexorable standard from which no difference or deviation is tolerated, and about which no further discussion can happen. But the result of doing so would be the complete erosion of human freedoms – and key human rights, too.
And that's a fact.
Ray Sanborn, St. Albert
