{"id":453,"date":"2005-02-12T15:55:06","date_gmt":"2005-02-12T22:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=453"},"modified":"2005-02-12T15:55:06","modified_gmt":"2005-02-12T22:55:06","slug":"dom-and-domber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2005\/02\/dom-and-domber\/","title":{"rendered":"D\u00f6m and D\u00f6mber"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember \u00c5ke Green, the backwater pastor who publicized an obsessively homophobic sermon in 2003, for which he was convicted to a month in prison by a regional court? That court had stringently applied a vaguely worded law that prohibits agitation against ethnic groups and homosexuals (hets mot folkgrupp<\/em>) — that decision has now been overturned<\/a> by an appeals courtBBC version<\/a> of events.<\/span>. I originally blogged him here<\/a> and here<\/a>. While there is no doubt that this is a victory for \u00c5ke Green, the prosecution has the right to appeal the verdict higher up the legal food chain, so the story is not over, though we are certainly in the next chapter.<\/p>\n

The verdict, in Swedish, is here<\/a>, as a one-page PDFOK, this really pisses me off. Why is G\u00f6ta Hovr\u00e4tt<\/a> using DRM technology to prevent me from copying and pasting bits from their PDF without me first plying the document with some secret password? What possible use does this restriction have? Surely legal verdicts are in the public domain, not copyrighted? I can view and manually retype the verdict but not command-C command-V — why?!<\/span>. The reasoning behind the verdict, translated by me, follows below (because it’s important to read the whole thing):<\/p>\n

The purpose of criminalizing agitation (hets<\/em>) against homosexuals is not to prevent discussions about homosexuality as such in churches or elsewhere in society. Nor are statements that judge homosexuals or expressions of disrespect automatically punishable by law. When it comes to sermons, the constitutional committee has declared that citing religious texts and merely encouraging listeners to follow these texts’ precepts does not normally constitute punishable conduct. However, the boundary between what is and what is not allowed is by no means clear, and in interpretations of the law even the European Convention must be taken into account. The conclusion here must be that only in rare cases should statements made in a sermon setting be deemed as hets mot folkgrupper<\/em>Please read along in Swedish on the DRM-protected PDF and suggest corrections to my translation.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

It is clear from the sermon and the pastor’s words that his main aim was to spread his literalist bible message. That which is apt to offend\/insult\/violate\/injure (kr\u00e4nka<\/em>) homosexuals in the pastor’s sermon is the bible-based categorical denunciation of homosexual relations as sin. His own addition, wherein he ties together citations, is not scientific and can, even if he has many reservations, be strongly questioned. The pastor’s exposition of these bible citations is notable for his choice of words, but their content is hardly more far-reaching than the bible texts he refers to. The right to preach a literal interpretation of the bible implies the ability to interpret and explain the bible in one’s own words, as long as the account is connected to the bible’s message. Even views that are foreign to the majority of citizens or even provocative may thus be expressed.<\/p>\n

There is nothing that indicates that the pastor used the sermon situation as a cover to attack homosexuals. The purpose of the sermon appears instead to have been to explain religious views and opinions which the pastor holds on bible texts and also to influence people’s way of life. Such conduct must be regarded as falling outside that which is punishable by law as hets mot folkgrupp<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a bizarre judgment this is. I think I like it even less than the first one. Whereas the original verdict declared that certain declarations by \u00c5ke Green in his sermon had no biblical foundation and were thus not protected by a constitution that protects the free interpretation of religious texts, this judgment seems to be saying that in fact the bible is<\/em> a homophobic document and that thus \u00c5ke Green can’t be blamed for merely divulging its contents with some added vim and vigor. It’s as if the majority of the court held up their hands and said, “Hey, we can’t help it if the bible has homophobic passages, but if that’s what the constitution protects, so be it.”<\/p>\n

Both these verdicts, then, have themselves engaged in the interpretation of a religious text — deciding what the Biblical God did or didn’t think about homosexuals. The first verdict concluded that there is no basis in the bible for virulent homophobia, and the second concluded precisely the opposite, using it to acquit \u00c5ke Green.<\/p>\n

This is so unsatisfactory on so many levels. I have no religious beliefs myself, and certainly no beliefs that hold a text to be sacred; are my ethical opinions, when expressed, now less protected by the Swedish constitution than \u00c5ke Green’s, because they cannot find supporting evidence in a religious text? What makes religious belief more worthy of protection than my own sincerely held beliefs? Does this mean that \u00c5ke Green is allowed to say “I think homosexuals should be jailed” because it is his sincerely held religious belief, whereas if a garden-variety homophobe makes the exact same statement he is criminally liable because his convictions are not of Biblical\/Koranic\/Talmudic originWhat’s more, who gets to decide which texts are religious — the state or the believer? Does Dianetics count? The Book of Mormon? Falun Dafa’s Zhuan Falun<\/a>?<\/span>?<\/p>\n

The verdict should have said that all speech expressing sincerely held beliefs (thus exluding perjury, libel, defamation and fraud) short of incitement to violence is protected. Period. Being convicted for hets mot folkrupp<\/em> should imply violent action, or the ordering of violent action, or the verbal incitement of individuals to violent actions against a group. \u00c5ke Green is innocent not because he did such things in the name of religion; he is innocent because he did no such things, the origin of his beliefs being irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember \u00c5ke Green, the backwater pastor who publicized an obsessively homophobic sermon in 2003, for which he was convicted to a month in prison by a regional court? That court had stringently applied a vaguely worded law that prohibits agitation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-religion","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-7j","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}