The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has shut down a Web site that equates gays with pedophilia and bestiality, saying it contravenes the country's hate laws.

"If the telephone is ideally suited to spread prejudicial ideas, the Internet is even better positioned," wrote Tribunal chairman Grant Sinclair in the ruling. The site is to be immediately closed, wrote Tribunal members.

The owner of the B.C.-based site, Joanne Vesvik, its creator and its Web master were all cited by the Tribunal as having worked to create a climate of homophobia.

The Internet "is a very public form of communication, inexpensive, easily accessed, and can communicate many messages simultaneously and instantaneously to a worldwide audience," wrote Mr. Sinclair. "The reasons of the court apply with even greater force to the Internet."

Material on the Web site suggests that gays have an agenda to legalize pedophilia and ultimately to corrupt society with their call for acceptance.

The Tribunal's decision is similar to one issued by the commission in January, ordering a Web site operated by holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel shut down.

A Vancouver man, Mark Schnell, 34, lodged a complaint with the Tribunal in 1999 and again in 2000, arguing its contents compromised his Charter rights.

The owner of the site failed to convince the human rights panel that the site was a legitimate attempt to combat pedophilia. The testimony of hate crime experts who described material on the site as directly targeted at gay men ultimately proved more credible.

"The Web site is not so much anti-pedophile as it is anti-homosexual," Mr. Sinclair wrote. "The homosexual lifestyle is persistently equated with sexual predation. The messages attribute to gay men uncontrollable sexual passion and aggression."

With a report from CP