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You and your girlfriend are a lesbian couple. One weekend, you go out to see a comedy show at your local comedy club. When you arrive, the pub employee who is the emcee for the evening is already onstage. You and your girlfriend find a table and once you sit down, she gives you a kiss. The emcee for the evening sees this and starts making homophobic comments about you and your date to the whole club, while he was onstage. Throughout the evening, he continues to insult you and your date with graphic sexual and homophobic insults every time he is onstage. You object to this treatment, ask the emcee to stop and then eventually complain to the club owner. As weeks go by, the emcee makes more discriminatory comments about you in a video he posts online. Your health starts to suffer, and you experience panic attacks and sleeplessness. Eventually, your doctor diagnoses you with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The emcee claims that his reactions to you were all part of his ‘act’ at the comedy club and part of his responsibilities as emcee. He claims that by kissing, you and your date drew attention to yourselves in a potentially disruptive way. He said that if you hadn’t acted that way, he wouldn’t have singled you out. You say that you and your date didn’t act in a disruptive way at all.

  • No, the emcee and the club he worked for are not meeting their obligations under the Code. Hate speech is not connected to an emcee’s job of managing an audience. His verbal attack on you and your date because you are lesbian violates the Code, which prohibits discrimination and caused harm to your health and wellbeing.

  • To be viewed as hate speech under the Code, the language used must be very extreme. Here are a few examples of the extreme language that hate speech typically includes:

    • describing group members as animals, subhuman or genetically inferior
    • suggesting group members are behind a conspiracy to gain control by plotting to destroy western civilization
    • denying, minimizing or celebrating past persecution or tragedies that happened to group members
    • labelling group members as child abusers, pedophiles or criminals who prey on children
    • blaming group members for problems like crime and disease
    • calling group members liars, cheats, criminals or any other term meant to provoke a strong reaction

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