Here’s a recent case of hate speech legislation run amok!
Swedish Pastor Defends Anti-Gay Sermon | STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A Pentecostal pastor charged with hate speech for denouncing homosexuality as a “cancerous tumor” defended his views in Sweden’s highest court Wednesday, saying gay sex was an abnormality on a par with pedophilia. Ake Green, 64, delivered a fiery anti-gay sermon two years ago that triggered a legal battle testing the limits of Sweden’s freedom of speech.
Green told the Supreme Court that his sermon was meant to warn gays that their lifestyle will result in an “eternal divorce” from God. “If two men sleep with each other, or if two women do so, it is abnormal, just like pedophilia,” Green said in his testimony. Audio broadcasts from the much-awaited hearing were carried live on nationwide TV, which is unusual in Sweden. The hearing was expected to last one day, but a ruling could take several weeks. Green became the first clergyman convicted under Sweden’s hate crimes legislation, which was modified in 2003 to include attacks against homosexuals. An appeals court overturned the ruling earlier this year, but Sweden’s chief prosecutor appealed the acquittal at the Supreme Court.
The problem with this is that there’s no human alive under any government that doesn’t have the right not to be “offended” or “insulted”. If I called someone stupid, should I go to jail on charges of hate speech? Rev. Green, who preached this sermon, preached on homosexuality’s ultimate “end”. The end is complete divorce from a Holy and sinless God. It’s the practice that God calls abomination…not those who choose to practice it. It’s not the “people” who are abominable, but rather the act. Several times in the Bible, Jesus said things similar to “go thy way and sin no more” or “turn away from their wicked ways”. God loves each and every person who is homosexual, but weeps for them for their sins. This story illustrates the tragedy that is our current social state of the world — as it was in the day of Sodom and Gomorrah, it will be in the day of the coming of the Lord.
2 Peter 2:6 — “And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;”
Jude 1:7 — “Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Those who pick and choose a little religion here and there from this and from that will one day see the error of their ways.