The Alberta Court of Appeals upheld the opinion of the Court of Queen’s Bench, stating that Boissoin has a right to express his beliefs on matters such as homosexuality as long as they are focused on a behavior and not a specific person.

In ending a decade-long battle, a high court in Canada has ruled in favor of a local pastor in dismissing an appeal that sought to overturn a lower court decision upholding his right to oppose homosexuality.

Pastor Stephen Boissoin had written a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate in 2002, expressing his Biblical beliefs about the homosexual lifestyle. After reading the letter as published in the Advocate, Dr. Darren Lund, a professor at the University of Calgary, filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, accusing Boissoin of violating Canada’s hate crimes law, which prohibits “hate propaganda.”

In May 2008, the Commission ruled against the pastor, and ordered him to cease and desist from further expressing any views regarding the homosexual lifestyle. He was also ordered to pay Dr. Lund the sum of $5,000, and to compose a written apology to the professor, although Lund was not the subject of Boissoin’s writings, nor did the two know each other.

In December 2009, the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta reversed the order, stating that Boissoin’s letter to the editor did not constitute hate speech.

“In my view, the panel erred in its finding that the impugned letter was hateful and contemptuous of homosexuals,” wrote Justice Earl C. Wilson on behalf of the court. “Had the Panel been alive to all [the] evidence, she could not have come to the conclusions that she did.”

However, the ruling was then appealed to Alberta’s highest court in an attempt to force the pastor to face punishment for his writings.

Last week, the Alberta Court of Appeals upheld the opinion of the Court of Queen’s Bench, stating that Boissoin has a right to express his beliefs on matters such as homosexuality as long as they are focused on a behavior and not a specific person.

“I acknowledge that drawing the distinction between expressions of opinion, and statements of another kind, may sometimes be difficult to draw, and may depend upon the context of the statement,” wrote the panel, which consisted of Justices Carole Conrad, Clifton O’Brien and Brian O’Ferrall.

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