derivative work

Right-wing homophobes have been freaking out over the Åke Green’s conviction under a Swedish hate speech code. They were particularly incensed because Green made his anti-gay comments from a church pulpit, and hailed the conviction as a sign of the treacherous path of hate speech codes. His conviction was reversed on appeal and then the Supreme Court of Sweden took it up. Now, interestingly, I found out that at the end of November, the Supreme Court also acquitted Green. Why? Because although he did violate the Swedish hate crime legislation, a sentence against him would likely violate the European Convention on Human Rights. So, right-wingers have to recognize … international law … for protecting human rights. I’m sure I’ll see that on the same blogs where right-wingers thank the ACLU.

(Caveat: I don’t read Swedish so my understanding of the Supreme Court opinion is based on this short synopsis by a Swedish attorney.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 8:42 am and is tagged freespeech, law, religion commentary, queer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. 1,197 views.