FIRST READING: The biblical passages that Canada could list as hate speech

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The Carney government is moving to tweak Canada’s hate speech laws so that biblical scripture could qualify as criminal hate speech.

The Criminal Code currently prescribes jail terms of up to two years for “wilful promotion of hatred.” However, there is an exemption if that statement is a “good faith” opinion “based on a belief in a religious text.”

But Bill C-9 — the Carney government’s first major justice bill — is looking to remove the religious exemption for hate speech. It’s a reform that the Bloc Québécois has been seeking since 2023, primarily to make it easier to prosecute Islamists.

Specifically, the Bloc was reacting to a 2023 incident in which the radical Montreal imam Adil Charkaoui led crowds in prayer for “Zionist aggressors” to be killed. “Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them,” he said in Arabic.

When multiple Quebec figures, including Quebec Premier François Legault, called on Charkaoui to be prosecuted for hate speech, the imam countered that his statement did not meet the threshold for hate speech, as it was a prayer. “It was a prayer for judgment,” Charkaoui said in a YouTube video.

Nevertheless, the Carney government’s proposed changes to the Criminal Code would be so sweeping that it’s unclear if the mere public airing of Christian biblical scripture could fall within the bounds of criminal speech.

Marc Miller, the newly appointed minister of Canadian identity and culture, has been quite open about this. In October testimony before a House of Commons committee, Miller said the Bible contains “clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals.”

“Clearly there are situations in these texts where these statements are hateful, they should not be used,” he said, adding that there should be discretion for “prosecutors to press charges.”

While there could be other biblical passages that could arguably fall within the rubric of what Canada considers “hate,” there’s a few that Miller has mentioned specifically. Below, a quick summary of the biblical passages most likely to be branded as hate speech if Bill C-9 passes.

Deuteronomy 22:22

Present in both Jewish texts and the Christian Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy is effectively a series of speeches by Moses in which he tells Israelites how God wants them to worship and live. And one of those rules is that adulterers should die. “If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die,” reads the King James translation of Deuteronomy 22:22.

Miller specifically referenced this passage in a social media post where he also cited his Christian bona fides. “I say this, in particular because I am a Christian: there should be no defence to the crime of publicly inciting hatred because, for example, someone relied on Leviticus 20:13 or Deuteronomy 22:22,” he wrote.

Killing adulterers is notably absent from modern Judaism or Christianity. The Catholic Church, for one, prescribes spiritual (rather than violent) atonement for adultery. And the Anglican Church of Canada has noted adulterer King Charles III as its head.

Among Christian groups opposing the Bill C-9 changes, one argument is that it’s largely addressing a problem that doesn’t exist. Canada has never really had a Deuteronomist “death to adulterers” movement, and Canadian courts have generally been quite skeptical about the religious exemption for hate speech. As one 2001 Ontario case put it, religious beliefs could not be “used with impunity as a Trojan Horse.”

That case concerned a pastor circulating pamphlets framing Muslims as terrorist agents seeking to conquer Canada. A trial judge ruled that the pastor’s religious convictions fully protected his belief in what he “perceived to be the dangerous spreading of Islam.” But as the decision concluded, that didn’t shield him from “engendering fear of and hatred towards Muslims.”

Leviticus 20:13

The Book of Leviticus is also a series of laws for ancient Israelites. Any critique of biblical literalism or orthodoxy is usually going to cite Leviticus at some point, given that many of its proscriptions are noticeably outdated by the standards of modern legal systems.

And Leviticus 20:13 is probably one of the most heavily cited in that regard. Leviticus contains some proscriptions that would be wildly progressive by the standards of the Ancient Middle East. Leviticus is the “love thy neighbour” chapter, and it’s also the one that says not to take advantage of immigrants.

The book gets much more hardline when it comes to issues of sexual ethics. Some of these are still relatively uncontroversial; don’t have sex with your aunt, your mother, your wife’s sister or animals.

But it also singles out homosexual acts for the death penalty. As the King James translation reads, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

The Book of Romans

Miller mentioned the book of Romans in his committee testimony, but didn’t specify what passage. This is the only New Testament book that he singled out as likely being hateful under Canadian law.

The chapter is generally believed to be written by Paul, the Pharisee-turned-Christian convert who became instrumental in solidifying Christianity as a mainstream faith. The part that usually gets cited as a condemnation of homosexuality starts at Romans 1:26.

Paul opens the chapter by describing the various sins of the pre-Christian Roman world, including its apparent tolerance for homosexuality.

“For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another.”

IN OTHER NEWS

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump casually told reporters that in 2026 he might end the CUSMA free trade deal. The deal, signed in 2018, allows any member state to withdraw with six months’ notice. Ending 32 years of free trade between the U.S. and Canada would be virtually guaranteed to plunge Canada into recession, but the good news is that it’s not quite as simple as Trump ripping up the deal. As an international treaty with accompanying implementation legislation, only the U.S. Congress could definitively cancel the deal. Also, the prior free trade agreement, NAFTA, is still technically in force and would kick back in if CUSMA was removed.

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.