Charges fly over venue's snub of author

by KATE DUBINSKI
October 23, 2010

https://www.legal-project.org/848/charges-fly-over-venue-snub-of-author

Excerpt:

Controversial author Mark Steyn may be too hot a potato for one city-owned London hall, but not for another.

The London Convention Centre calls its decision to deny Steyn a room rental for a Nov. 1 speech a business one, but the event's right-wing organizers - who have since booked Centennial Hall - are crying foul.

"A government agency should not be censoring a public event," said Andrew Lawton, one of three men who operate strictlyright.com, the organization bringing Steyn to London.

The bloggers were most recently responsible for bringing American neo-conservative political commentator Ann Coulter to speak at the University of Western Ontario.

Steyn was to speak somewhere on campus, but organizers decided the swift sale of tickets meant they should look for a larger venue.

Steyn is a Canadian author and columnist whose views on Islam - that the religion is going to stage a bloody takeover of the West, mainly because of worldwide demographic shifts - landed him before the B.C. Human Rights Commission after an excerpt of his book was published in Maclean's magazine.

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