OTTAWA — James Chamberlain was “thrilled” when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 7-2 in favor of his five-year struggle to introduce homosexual textbooks in his kindergarten and first-grade family life class.

Himself a homosexual, Chamberlain wanted to teach 5- and 6-year-olds about gay and lesbian families. So in 1997 he applied to include three readers — Asha's Moms, Belinda's Bouquet and One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads — from a canon drawn up by the Gay and Lesbian Educators of British Columbia.

The school board, citing the moral and religious objections of parents, voted 4-2 to stop the teacher.

But Chamberlain took them to court, and last December, the Supreme Court ruled the board had “failed to consider the curriculum's goal that children at the K-1 level be able to discuss their family models and that all children be made aware of the di-versity of family models in our society.”

“One is never too young to learn tolerance,” wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin for the majority.

The ruling was one of several setbacks that drove a leading pro-family activist, Toronto lawyer Gwen Landolt, to predict it will soon be a criminal offense in Canada to express religious-based opposition to homosexual behavior.

“Tolerance is the code word for unconditional acceptance of homosexuality,” said Landolt, co-founder of the Real Women of Canada, a pro-family women's organization, on Jan. 18.

Homosexuals predicted the clash. Barbara Findlay, a lesbian lawyer in Vancouver, said in 1997 the “legal struggle for queer rights will one day be a showdown between freedom of religion versus sexual orientation.”

Free Speech?

In the federal Parliament, homosexual politician Svend Robinson of the left-wing opposition New Democratic Party is sponsoring two bills that lend credence to such predictions.

The first is an attempt to immediately abolish the legal distinction between homosexual and heterosexual marriage. The Minister of Jus tice, Martin Cauchon, has already asked the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to examine the pros and cons of homosexual marriage and make recommendations.

Robinson's second bill, C-250, would add “sexual orientation” to color, race, religion and ethnic origin in sections 318 (inciting genocide against an identifiable group) and 319 (inciting hatred) in the criminal code's hate-propaganda provisions.

The effect would be to criminalize criticism of homosexuality or “homosexual rights.” If convicted, a person could face five years for inciting genocide and up to two years for lesser hate crimes.

The bill passed second reading in Parliament last June and is also under review by the justice committee. If it goes through without amendment, said Vic Toews, a member of Parliament and justice spokesman with the Canadian Alliance, the largest conservative opposition party, the bill would have a severe “chilling effect” on free speech.

“While the stated purpose of the bill is to prevent the communication of hatred,” Toews said in a Jan. 28 press release, “it will have substantial negative consequences on the rights of Canadians to exercise free speech and to communicate and adhere to essential matters of faith.”

Robinson did not return calls for comment. But John Fisher, a spokesman for Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, said “sincere religious convictions” are exempted.

Section 319.3(b) of the criminal code leaves room for a person accused by a homosexual group to establish his innocence in court if he can prove his statements are true or “if, in good faith, he expressed or attempted to establish by argument an opinion on a religious subject.”

But this leaves a wide scope for harassment of faith-based organizations. Toews said private-interest groups would be in a position to mount civil lawsuits and other non-criminal proceedings.

An incremental strategy could start with “indirect attacks,” he said, such as stripping the charitable tax status from institutions; confiscation of literature by customs; even blackmail of hotels that carry Gideon's Bibles (which could be found to contain “hatred”).

Toews, a Mennonite from southern Manitoba, said homosexuals have already convinced public schools in his home province to boycott a popular youth camp because of its biblical behavior standards.

Freedom of Religion?

Across Canada, courts are rolling back religious freedom. An Ontario superior court last year forced a publicly funded Catholic school to allow a 17-year-old student to bring his 21-year-old male partner to the graduation prom.

The judge said for the school to allow the student to dance with his male date would not negatively af fect religious freedom. He cited the “di-versity of opinion within the Church” about homosexuality and the catechism's call for nondiscrimination.

This pressure on Catholic schools is what home-schooling parents such as Miriam Doylend, an Ottawa mother of nine (and grandmother of four), foresaw a generation ago.

As parents, Doylend said “many are now afraid for our own children and the right to provide education in the home because they may be at home being taught something that outside the home is illegal and which is being criminalized.”

Father John Horgan, pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul parish in Vancouver, a city known for its high concentration of homosexuals, said, “Our sense is that clergy would be protected in the pulpit. But there are real concerns about other aspects of the Church's mission and ministry to teach [in schools and other institutions].”

In other cases, an appeals court upheld a human-rights tribunal that fined an evangelical Christian $5,000 for publishing “anti-gay” scriptural quotations. A public school teacher, also an evangelical, was suspended by his teachers college for criticizing the homosexual movement in letters to the editor written on his own time.

Iain Benson, a Catholic lawyer involved in most homosexual-rights clashes during the past decade, said Canada's top judges have been operating according to a “monistic” worldview that “conveniently seeks to bracket out religious perspectives while leaving in place those animated by agnosticism and atheism.”

Member of Parliament Toews said he expects Parliament will uphold the traditional definition of marriage later this year, and he is lobbying fellow committee members hard to amend the hate propaganda bill's “social ramifications — which many did not at first realize.”

However, he predicted, “The real fight won't be before the parliamentary committee or even in Parliament — but before the courts.”

Chris Champion writes from Ottawa.