Opinion: The right verdict
Publicerat 2005-11-29 14:02
To parody the newly acquitted Pentecostal pastor, we could say that religious fundamentalism is a cancerous tumour on the body of society; distorted interpretations of the ancient manuscripts may even violate love itself.
And even so, the Supreme Court’s ruling was right. No matter how repellent and dotty Åke Green’s words may have been, they do not qualify as incitement to hatred against minorities, spoken as they were in church with reference to the Bible and before a congregation of 50 people.
The Bible like the Koran is filled with passages that conflict with the way people are regarded in democratic and enlightened societies. Sending interpreters and misinterpreters of these religions to prison is, however, not the proper way of carrying on the process of enlightenment.
Traces of all such repression are horrifying. We see it for example in many Muslim countries where modernity is represented by repressive secular regimes which make fundamentalists martyrs, thus compromising democracy and pluralism.
More often than not, this ends in a vicious circle. The vicious circle culminated in Iran, which has been living in a religious dictatorship for a quarter of a century. It can be seen in Iraq, where political oppression has been replaced by a heightened religious fervour that is impeding normalization.
An open society has to have room to manoeuvre. This is the only way of dealing with meetings between different cultures and religions in the age of globalization, and of defending free speech, even blasphemy in all of its forms.
Åke Green is a case for debate rather than the courts, even if his cancer simile was truly close to the edge. We know that homosexuals are still a vulnerable group in Swedish society. They are discriminated against and are often victims of violence.
For the time being it may seem as if intolerance has won a victory, but in actual fact it is just the opposite. It is always darkest before the dawn. It is when openness and freedom are close at hand that resistance intensifies in word and deed.
Seen from this perspective, the Åke Green case can be a turning point. A society that acknowledges exceptional views also acknowledges exceptional lifestyles.
It is high time that the persecution of homosexuals was stopped. The hate crimes law is still a part of the protection that is necessary, even though Åke Green did not manage to qualify himself for conviction.
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