The continuing controversy involving Sean Feucht, the American Christian rocker and MAGA darling who has been denied permits for his concerts all across Eastern Canada, has become just dreadfully irritating.
It is irritating to watch Mr. Feucht’s critics conflate his opinions – on abortion (he’s against it), on homosexuality (he believes it is a perversion of God’s will), on the “trans agenda” (“demonic,” according to Mr. Feucht) – with the promotion of hatred, as defined by the Criminal Code. Hate speech is not protected speech, but not all offensive speech is hate speech. We as a society went over this, ad nauseum, during the peak of the cancel-culture furor around 2017 or so. Apparently we’ve forgotten what we learned during that time.
