{"id":388,"date":"2004-07-02T03:23:13","date_gmt":"2004-07-02T10:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=388"},"modified":"2004-07-02T03:23:13","modified_gmt":"2004-07-02T10:23:13","slug":"insult-isnt-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/07\/insult-isnt-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Insult isn't injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last summer, on an island off the coast of Sweden’s bible belt, Pentecostal pastor \u00c5ke Green said some very nasty things about homosexuals in a sermon (in Swedish<\/a>) entitled “Is homosexuality a inborn urge or a game evil powers play with Man?” You can guess what the answer was. He quoted liberally from the old testament to show homosexuality is a temptation of the devil, blamed the spread of AIDS on the legalization of homosexual sex, said homosexuality arises from wet dreams, excessive fantasizing, the porn industry, a positive image in the media, and that it is a gateway activity to pedophilia and bestiality, both of which are practiced predominantly by homosexuals. Basically, the kind of thing you get to hear on an average day in a Pentecostal church in backwater Louisiana or Mississippi.<\/p>\n

He delivered his Sunday sermon to some 50 parishioners in fuming anticipation of a “gay day” on the island, invited the media to attend (none came), and then sent the transcript around to papers, one of which printed bits of it. For spreading his message thus, he was charged under a Swedish law originally intended to prohibit agitation against ethnic groups (hets mot folkgrupper<\/em>), but which was expanded in 2003 to include homosexuals as a group. This was the first such use of the law, and Tuesday’s ruling by a local court was thus a test for its scopeThe motivation for extending the law’s scope was the fact that Nazi sympathisers have in the past incited violence against gays through speech at demonstrations, and there was found to be no explicit legal proscription against such speech. The original law was intended to protect Jews from skinhead malfeasance. Regardless of the quality of the law, I have no qualms with treating ethnic groups on a par with gays in this respect.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In the ruling, the court decided Green was guilty, sentenced him to a month in prison and fined him around $3,600. I’ve now read the ruling<\/a> [Swedish, PDF; page 13 is missing in the PDF, but that part is covered here<\/a>], and join David Weman over at Fistful of Euros<\/a> in thinking that this decision is deeply flawed. At its core, it states that strident public speech making claims about ethnic groups or gays that can be construed as insulting is illegal, even if the speaker believes those claims to be true, and even if the grounds for such beliefs are religiousGudmundson has the press links<\/a>.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

This criteria for prohibited speech is far broader than one which prohibits speech which intends to incite violence. Here is the ruling’s nut sentence:<\/p>\n

Den r\u00e4ttighet homosexuella som grupp har att inte uts\u00e4ttas f\u00f6r kr\u00e4nkningar m\u00e5ste, enligt tings\u00e4ttens mening, vara mer skyddsv\u00e4rd \u00e4n \u00c5ke Greens r\u00e4tt att f\u00e5 g\u00f6ra dessa kr\u00e4nkande uttalanden i religionens namn.<\/span>The right of homosexuals as a group not to be exposed to insults must, in the opinion of this court, be more worthy of protection than \u00c5ke Green’s right to make these insulting statements in the name of religion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gasp. I have no problem with prohibiting speech that intends to incite violence. I do have a problem with a law, or an interpretation of a law — I’m still not sure which it is — that prohibits insulting speech. Such speech is certainly reprehensible, and it should be condemned as uncivil and boorish, but it should not be illegal. Despite the findings of this ruling, there is<\/em> plenty of room for such speech in a vibrant, confident democratic society. I’d even say that the unfettered presence of such speech is essential, because it forces a society to continually assess what constitutes civil<\/em> behaviour; it is only through such debates that a modern society can inoculate itself against the emergence of more virulent strains of bigotry. Legislation against such speech does away with this process.<\/p>\n

Before we examine how this ruling came to regard insulting speech as “agitation” against defined groups, let’s immediately get one thing out of the way: \u00c5ke Green’s parishioners, God-fearing Pentecostalists that they are, did not attack gays after his sermon, and his sermon contained nothing that can be construed as condoning physical harm against homosexuals. There was no incitement to violence.<\/p>\n

What then defines “agitation” against an ethnic group or gays (def: hets mot folkgrupper<\/em><\/a>)? My own preferred criteria would set the bar at incidents wherein an agitator attempts to get others to commit violence against a group through speech. Clearly, this court saw different.<\/p>\n

In the ruling, the law’s purpose for criminalizing agitation is cited as not intending to threaten scientific inquiry, free debate, religious freedom and minority opinions. However, the citation continues“Den inneb\u00e4r d\u00e4remot ett fullt godtagbart krav p\u00e5 att \u00e4ven andra m\u00e4nniskors r\u00e4ttigheter och den grundl\u00e4ggande demokratiska principen om alla m\u00e4nniskors lika v\u00e4rde skall respekteras vid ut\u00f6vandet av dessa fri- och r\u00e4ttigheter.”<\/span>, “it does involve a wholly reasonable demand that other people’s rights and the fundamental democratic principle that all people are created equal be respected when exercising these freedoms and rights.”<\/p>\n

From this passage, the court infers that a courteous (“saklig<\/em>“) discussion in which homosexuality is criticized would have been perfectly acceptable under the lawDoes this mean then that it wasn’t the content of pastor Green’s sermon but the strident manner<\/em> in which he delivered it that violated the rights of gays? That’s not clear either. I can hardly imagine that making the same points as the pastor but with flowery language, a mellifluous voice and an apologetic smile is going to make a difference to anyone why cares to listen.<\/span>. The court then says that “the law is clear in stating that speech which can be construed as insulting for homosexuals is forbidden according to Swedish legislation.”<\/p>\n

That was easy! All that is left to do now is to weigh the fundamental rights to freedom of religion and speech against this fundamental right not to be insulted. The solution, according to the court, is to use the principle of proportionality. One should try to avoid, as much as possible, insulting others when expressing your opinions — freely, of course. How did \u00c5ke Green do in this regard?<\/p>\n

To find out, the ruling spends some time dissecting various parts of Green’s sermon. Another court previously decided, in January 2003, that merely citing and interpreting passages from the Bible or other religious texts cannot ever be considered criminal, even if the isolated passages in question can be construed as agitation against gays. Fortunately for the court, it finds plenty of bits in the pastor’s sermon that were not directly gleaned from scripture — it lists, for example, his assertion that bestiality and pedophilia is predominantly a gay thing, and that homosexuality is a cancer tumor in society.<\/p>\n

It’s on account of these statements that the pastor is found guilty.<\/p>\n

I’ve already explained why pastor Green should be allowed to call homosexuality a tumor if he wants to: It brings such opinions out into the open, so that he can be reprimanded in no uncertain terms by the court of public<\/em> opinion, and so that society itself is moved to restate its values from first principles periodically, through debate. But there are other reasons why this law is atrocious. For example, which of the following scenarios are now also illegal?<\/p>\n