Accord­ing to Reu­ters, Cana­dian Cit­izen Peter Hayes has been gran­ted a chance to plead his case to the Human rights tribunal in Van­couver. He claims to have been:

“…dis­crim­in­ated against because he is a pagan who prac­tices a “BDSM life­style” and deserves pro­tec­tion under the human rights code, based on sexual orientation…”

Appar­ently an officer of the Van­couver Police had denied Mis­ter Hayes a license neces­sary so that he could work as a chauf­feur. After the police had gone to court over the mat­ter try­ing to get the case dis­missed the appeals court has finally decided that Mis­ter Hayes may go ahead and plead his case, stating:

“On the facts alleged, it appears that it would be arti­fi­cial and per­haps impossible to sep­ar­ate the reli­gious and sexual ori­ent­a­tion parts of Mr. Hayes’ com­plaint… — Lind­say Lyster”

Com­mon Sense

It seems to me that finally com­mon sense has pre­vailed. How is a court able to make a judge­ment when there is insuf­fi­cient know­ledge on a topic, just as men­tioned in the art­icle pub­lished by Reuters:

“How can the tribunal determ­ine if BDSM falls within the mean­ing of ‘sexual ori­ent­a­tion’ if it does not have a full under­stand­ing of what BDSM means?” — Justice Anne Rowles

No one can make a sound state­ment on what is right or wrong when it comes to sexual prac­tices and the choice of life­style that comes with it. While I agree that it will be hard for a court to determ­ine whether a cer­tain sexual prac­tice should be pro­tec­ted under the human rights act, I feel that this is not going far enough.

Life­style and Practice

Being an indi­vidual which prac­tices the sexual parts of a BDSM rela­tion­ship does not neg­ate that he also prac­tices the val­ues which are inher­ently tied into liv­ing this life­style. Why should an indi­vidual not be a per­fectly cap­able chauf­feur while still being allowed to call his wife slave instead of wife. To me this is not a case of dis­crim­in­a­tion against a cer­tain sub-set of ideas and prac­tices present in BDSM, to me this seems to be a clear case of reject­ing what you do not understand.

I would argue that the officer involed would have never made this decision if he had prop­erly under­stood what BDSM is and what it means to live a life­style that is gov­erned by it. Just as almost every­one under­stands today that homo­sexual indi­vidu­als are more than cap­able of con­trib­ut­ing valu­able assets to our society.

Our duty

I feel that it is our duty to ensure that such mis­un­der­stand­ings are cleared up as quickly as pos­sible. Hav­ing a court rat­ify that prac­tising BDSM is per­fectly nor­mal is only the first step. While it brings media atten­tion and thus makes it of interest to some of the press it does not embed under­stand­ing and accept­ance into the soci­ety we have to live with.
It should be our duty to edu­cate those we inter­act with, loos­ing our fear of being rejec­ted and work­ing on mak­ing BDSM a choice that is per­fectly nor­mal and just as accept­able as being homo­sexual or highly religious.