Swedish pastor’s hate crime conviction overturnedFeb 11, 2005 Appeals court accepts Becket Fund’s free speech argument A Swedish appeals court today overturned the conviction of a pastor sentenced to jail for his preaching from the pulpit. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in the case, and its free speech arguments were reflected in the Swedish court’s opinion. The brief reminded the court of its obligations to guarantee each of its citizens the religious liberty, freedom of expression, and equal protection of the laws secured by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”), to which Sweden is a signatory.
Pastor Green was sentenced to one month in jail last year for a sermon that he preached to his congregation in 2003 on Biblical texts addressing homosexuality. His sermon was later reprinted in a local newspaper. The conviction made Pastor Green the first clergyman to be convicted under Sweden’s hate crimes law.
The Goeta Appeals Court ruled that Sweden’s free speech laws protected Pastor Green from prosecution, accepting the argument from The Becket Fund’s brief that the guarantee of freedom of expression means that “it is not the role of a government composed of men to declare what is orthodoxy by punishing those who publicly teach one religious view of what is right, even if that view may offend others.” The full brief is available at http://www.becketfund.org/pdfs/333_39.pdf.
The court ruled that Pastor Green had a right to preach about “the Bible's categorical condemnation of homosexual relations as a sin,” even if such views were “alien to most citizens.”
“By throwing out Pastor Green’s conviction, Sweden saved itself from becoming the first democracy ever to convict a religious leader for speech delivered from the pulpit,” said Becket Fund Director of Litigation Derek Gaubatz. “Though one might have expected such things from the pariah states of this world, it seemed inconceivable that Sweden would jail a pastor merely for expressing a view that some people found distasteful. If they had followed this rule previously, they wouldn’t have been able to welcome Bishop Tutu as a Nobel Prize winner, because he offended so many in his country by declaring apartheid to be sinful.”
“Green’s acquittal is a knockout in the fight for the fundamental, internationally-recognized freedoms of expression and religion,” declared Jared Leland, Media and Legal Counsel at The Becket Fund. “We hope that further attempts to thwart religious expression by criminal prosecution never make it into the ring.”
The Becket Fund is a nonpartisan, interfaith, public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. The Becket Fund is also a Non-Governmental Organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.
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