|
A Toronto comedian facing a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal confesses on YouTube to peppering two Vancouver lesbians with derogatory comments at a Commercial Drive restaurant. But Guy Earle stresses the comments he made last year to Lorna Pardy and her partner at Zesty's Restaurant (now known as Zawa) were not motivated by sexual discrimination but out of his hatred for hecklers. In the video, the comedian says he doesn't "hate anybody based on sexual orientation" but does "hate hecklers." "They pissed me off, so I said some rude things," he says. "Does that mean I should go to court because I said something rude?" The remarks he made to them, he says, had to do with oral sex and the use of a sex toy. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, meanwhile, will decide whether Earle crossed the line when he launched his sally of invectives. In a decision released this week, Pardy claims Earle broke the B.C. Human Rights Code when he shouted "homophobic" remarks at her table while performing at the Vancouver restaurant. The restaurant has also been named in the complaint. "Ms. Pardy alleges that she and her same-sex partner were subjected to a tirade of homophobic and sexist comments by Mr. Earle," wrote tribunal chair Heather MacNaughton in deciding the tribunal will go ahead and hear the complaint. "Mr. Earle denies that he discriminated, while admitting that his interactions with Ms. Pardy and her partner were heated." While not predicting how the tribunal will eventually rule in her just-released preliminary decision, MacNaughton wrote that the two sides are far apart in their recollections of how things went the evening of March 22, 2007. There is also some dispute, she noted, concerning the involvement of alcohol. While Pardy could not be reached for comment, Earle explains in the YouTube video that it began when the two women began heckling him. Claiming they struck first, he says he told them to be quiet and only later escalated his attack. "They were intimating that I didn't like them because they were lesbians," he says. He added yesterday in an interview with Canwest News Service: ". . . I was very rude and visceral to them because, like I said, if you have a heckler, what you want to do is put them in their place by offending them, so I tried to hit them where it hurts and the only thing I had to key on was the fact that they were lesbians. "I don't care if they're lesbians, heterosexuals, homosexuals or giraffes." The B.C. Liberties Association declined comment on the allegations, citing unfamiliarity with the case. But Mark Dennison, a longstanding Vancouver comedian and instructor at Langara College's stand-up comedy clinic, said there is a fine line between comedy and outright discrimination. And from what he's heard, he said, the material Earle supposedly used was "mean-spirited" and a "pointed attack" based on "completely wrong assumptions." "Comedy is inclusive. We laugh because we see commonality," he said. "I don't think anything is off-limits as long as it is handled in a way that shows us what makes us the same."
 |
