According to a recent (Dec 13, 2009) WorldNetDaily article following President Obama’s signing of the expanded “hate crimes” law, Canadian law practioner Gerald Chipeur believes that this legislation will have far worse ramifications for America than the mess it has already caused in Canada.

“I would be shocked if you did not have 100 times more problems with this legislation than we are. Your system is set up to encourage lawyers to do this, and you have so many more people, there is more opportunity for people to take offense,” he said.
…
“There are certain people in society who look to the government for everything, including to help them with their hurt feelings. The government was never made for that,” he said.
Regardless, “there are those who want the government to bless their approach to life, whatever it is, because they have this view. They come to the point they want the government to say … you are right.”
…
Then those interests want the “power of the state to punish anyone who disagrees,” he said. The result is, “doing exactly what we did 500 years ago. They will be going on a witch hunt, [repeating] the Spanish Inquisition.”

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=118710

I’m not exactly sure how comparative Australian legislation is on this issue, although I am aware of the trial of two Pastors in Victoria who were charged under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 a few years ago simply for teaching their congregation the history of Islam. I’ll stand corrected on the details, but as I understand it no-one was claiming that what they taught was false, simply that they taught it was considered sufficient grounds to arrest them for vilification of another religious group. (Read the preamble on page one of the Act – and the first link below – and you’ll get the gist of it)

Now while the focus of the WorldNetDaily article was more about what certain homosexual activists may do in light of such laws, this is neither here nor there, because as Benjamin Bull alluded to in the WorldNetDaily article, there is nothing tolerant about silencing your opponents point of view, whatever that may be. In the marketplace of ideas, certain views are being censored, and that is exactly what the pseudo-tolerance mongers have in mind.

Recommended further reading:

Religious vilification in Australia
The Intolerance of Tolerance
When Tolerance Is Intolerant

Other related Aristophrenium articles: