A Toronto comedian and a Vancouver restaurant to pay $22,000 in compensation for the comedian’s anti-gay, profanity-laced verbal attack on two lesbian audience members.
The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal said the comments were discriminatory.
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Amateur standup comedian Guy Earle has been ordered to pay $15,000 to Lorna Pardy, 32, who filed the complaint last year after she and her lesbian partner were taunted at Zesty’s Restaurant on Commercial Drive on May 22, 2007. Restaurant owner Salam Ishmail has been ordered to pay her $7,500.
Pardy filed a complaint in 2007, claiming she was discriminated against on the basis of her gender and sexual orientation in contravention of the Criminal Code. She said Earle directed homophobic and sexist insults at her when she was a patron and he was the master-of-ceremonies at an open mike comedy show at the restaurant.
“Mr. Earle made two sets of comments from the stage at Zesty’s, to and about Ms. Pardy and her friends … including referring to them as ‘fucking cunts,’ ‘stupid cunts,’ ‘stupid dykes’ and ‘fucking dyke cunts,'” wrote tribunal member Murray Geiger-Adams, in the 107-page decision.
Earle did not deny he was offensive, but claimed Pardy and her partner rudely heckled him and other comics on stage that night. He said he will appeal the decision.
