Photo Credit: Bethany Paquette, Facebook Profile
Meet Bethany Paquette.
She is a devout Christian who thinks that gays are degenerates who should burn in hell for eternity, and certainly should not get equal treatment under the law. She learned from the best: Trinity Western University. A fundamentalist Christian university, which not only excludes non-Christians from their student and staff ranks, but also forces them to abstain from sexual intercourse outside of traditional marriage between a man and a woman. The university is so prejudiced that several law societies in Canada have refused to recognize graduates from their planned law school, with the matter now slowly making its way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Bethany holds a "Biology Degree" from Trinity Western University, which solely covers creation, as evolution is strongly rejected by her faith. She is also very actively involved with the university at many levels, including personal. She volunteers and evangelizes. She tells the word of god especially with respect to who should fuck who. Her professional experience is limited to "guiding" short rafting outings within a few yards from a highway. She does not hold wilderness first aid qualifications, or any outdoor-related credentials.
Most certainly advised by her god, Bethany however decides one day to apply for a guiding job with a division of a European company that specializes in hardcore expeditions and training. She does not meet any of the minimum requirements for the position. Nor the physical standards. But it doesn't matter. She is a woman. She is a Christian. She is entitled to the position.
Sure enough, Bethany is promptly advised that she does not meet the minimum requirements of the position, and as a result, her application has been rejected. Bethany, who has engaged in highly reprehensible comments against gay people in the past, and who is involved at all possible levels with the most religiously oppressive and prejudiced educational institution in the country, is also kindly advised that her views against gays, and her religious extremism, are not compatible with the philosophy of the Norse company.
Bethany could just move on at that point. However, she quickly becomes overwhelmed by greed (a deadly sin under her faith), and the prospect of free money over some dubious discrimination claim. Indeed, someone has dared to take position against discrimination and oppression by the Church, in the world's center of political correctness: British Columbia, Canada. She ought to milk it.
So she responds with a rant justifying her position against gay people, discarding the abject horrors committed by her religion, and, this is a good one, suggesting that the Christianization of Norse people was the best thing that could have happened to us, as we were just uncivilized savages. In her own admission, she even ends her message with a forced blessing, for the only purpose of aggravating the reader.
We Vikings are never the ones to shy away from a good conflict, or from holding our ground for what we believe in. So sure enough, Bethany is promptly given a reality check, namely that Christianity has nearly destroyed our culture, and that we Vikings want nothing to do with some dude who was conceived by a whore who made up some story in order to avoid being stoned to death.
This is all the ammo Bethany needs for a juicy award, and she promptly files a claim for religious discrimination with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, asking for nearly $100,000 in damages and... lost wages (on a job she never got). Based on address, telephone numbers, specific statements to that effect during the job application process, and other specifics, she knows that the company she is pursing is located in Europe. She trusts, nonetheless, that the Canadian need for political correctness will trump any legal or jurisdictional considerations. And she is correct in her assumptions, as the BC Human Rights Tribunal promptly accepts her claim, although it simply has no jurisdiction over European countries.
On advice from her evangelical lawyer, and fellow graduate from Trinity Western University, she also involves the media for the purpose of publicly pressuring the company to give her a quick settlement. What ensues is a campaign of harassment and character assassination against the adventure company and some of its officials by both the Liberal media (which are only liberal for opinions they agree with), and the religious right media (which cannot think straight the minute their religion is involved).
Public opinion, however, remains sided against Paquette, with the outdoor company receiving tens of thousands of messages of support from Canadians. Paquette and her lawyer therefore decide to take it one step further by involving religious extremist groups to harass and threaten the guiding company and pressure the operator into a settlement. Normally, this would have been called terrorism. However, as we all know, terrorism never applies when Christians are involved.
The outdoor adventure company, however, still doesn't cave in and refuses to settle or even apologize. Even when threatened with company officials being extradited to Canada to face charges of... blasphemy. Yup, criticizing Christianity in Canada is still a crime under the Canada Criminal Code.
Paquette and her lawyer, fully supported by the BC Human Rights Tribunal, then engage in a campaign of legal harassment against company officials that will drag on for over a year. Everything goes: threats of death and torture, violations of fundamental rights (with respect to language, Norse faith, personal security, privacy, legal representation, etc...), bogus applications and orders... The BC Human Rights Tribunal even goes as far as ordering the company to produce records from Europe, when the tribunal specifically advertises on its web site that its jurisdiction does not extend beyond the borders of British Columbia. Something that doesn't require a rocket scientist to figure out anyway.
The outdoor company still doesn't cave in, and vehemently refuses to produce any record located outside of British Columbia. The outdoor company also strongly and repeatedly protests the tribunal's bias and harassment, to no avail. The BC Human Rights Tribunal goes as far as denying company officials the very right to file their own claims.
Faced with the BC Human Rights Tribunal's evident bias in the matter, and systematic violation of their most fundamental rights, officials from the outdoor adventure company and their lawyer eventually decide to walk out of court, and advise the BC Human Rights Tribunal that they do not recognize its jurisdiction, and as a result, would not honor any judgement.
Bethany, however, has gone too far and just cannot back out. Especially with her lawyer working on contingency and expecting a fat reward. So she proceeds with her case, although the company she is suing has just elected to no longer make any representations, showing, rightly so, their contempt for what the world now sees as a kangaroo court.
Faced with the obvious and based on overwhelming evidence, the BC Human Rights Tribunal, however biased it may be against non-Christians (the Tribunal's chair used to run residential schools in Canada together with the Church), rules that Paquette is indeed unqualified for the job she had applied for, and as a result, would have never gotten the job in the first place. So, this should have been the end of it, right?
Wrong. One can never underestimate the PC-induced retardation of a Canadian human rights tribunal. So, although the tribunal was forced to agree she was unqualified for the job and would have never gotten said job anyway, they still find that she was discriminated against, for that very job she would have never gotten anyway, based on her religion. Yes. You read that right.
It gets better though. The tribunal also deems the email exchange she initiated, unsolicited, and from which she could have disengaged at any time, to be... religious harassment from the outdoor operator! Blatantly ignoring the astronomically higher threshold for harassment previously established by Canadian courts.
Now, how much did she get you ask? US$6,500. Yup. A few thousand bucks. Which she will never collect as the company has refused to honor the judgement. And good luck to force Vikings to cough up anything if they don't want to. Especially when they have been quite aggravated, and when European courts are on their side.
Morality of the story is, no jurisdiction on earth, no matter how PC driven, will ever manage to submit Vikings to fucktardation. Had Paquette understood this fundamental premise of Norse culture, she would have saved herself a lot of aggravation, and stigma that means no decent employer will ever want to touch her resume with a 10-ft pole. But again, then we wouldn't have gotten the Paquette Saga for our entertainment!
Where is Paquette now? Picking up dog shit for free in some shit hole in Yukon (labor law doesn't apply in Yukon, where most tourism staff are "volunteers"), living in third world conditions without electricity and running water. Karma is a bitch.
#DontFuckWithVikings
Latest Media Update: Canadian Press