Änglar i Sodom

I'm not sure what this headline actually means, but it is the heading on the latest story on the Swedish Christian website Bibeltemplet, or The Bible Temple. My question is, am I being brave by posting it, standing up for freedom of speech? Or am I guilty of inciting hatred against homosexuals? And if I let the usual suspects post the usual types of comments we get here, am I guilty of being an accessory to incitement? The context of these questions is that Sweden's Local website reports that Leif Liljeström, a Christian website editor who was sentenced to two months in prison for inciting hatred against homosexuals has been cleared by the Supreme Court in Sweden. Ssee our news story also.

I hope we might tempt Christopher back to these discussions, although I don't blame him frankly if he stays away after some of what was said the last time this issue was debated here. It is time to ask for a tone of greater respect. MPs are today debating the Queen's Speech, including the proposed new law to make inciting hatred for homosexuals an offence.

My own view on this mirrors that of Rowan Atkinson. In a letter to today's Times, he says: 'A worrying aspect of the initiative is that it appears to be infinitely extendable: witness the fact that the Government has invited two additional groups — the disabled and transsexuals — to "make the case" for the proposed legislation to be extended to them. I am sure that they could make a very good case, as indeed could all those who can claim that they cannot help being the way they are. Men, for example. Or women. Or people with big ears.

'This "tick the box if you’d like a law to stop people being rude about you" is one way of filling the legislative programme, but there are serious implications for freedom of speech, humour and creative expression.

'The devil, as always, will be in the detail, but the casual ease with which some people move from finding something offensive to wishing to declare it criminal — and are then able to find factions within government to aid their ambitions — is truly depressing.'

A few weeks ago in our paper, Matthew Parris also condemned this new law. 'We gays are not so weedy that we can't take insults,' he wrote.

Leifert Leif might be celebrating his freedom today, but two judges dissented from the ruling in Sweden. It is surely only a matter of time before someone ends up behind bars. As Atkinson says, people should be taught  in schools, in the workplace, to police themselves. And maybe I need some lessons in how to wield greater censorship on this site.

But if the Government was looking for a way actually to incite anger, if not hatred, they could not have found a better one.

Just think of the demo's to come outside Parliament, the court cases, the imprisonments, the protests. It's clearly going to keep me in employment for a few years more so I suppose I should be grateful.

But wait a minute. I get my own share of odium from various quarters. I am one of a handful of religious affairs correspondents in Britain, so there's the 'minority' box ticked. And there are lots of people out there who express what can only be described as 'hatred' for me. Yes, really! One particularly odious US blogger repeatedly refers to me as Ruth 'I'm too dangerously unqualified to keep my job' Gledhill. So there's the incitement box ticked. And that's without even mentioning You Know Who! (Not quite sure where Stephen Bates fits in all this though, having just read his New Humanist piece on why he gave up being religious affairs correspondent for The Guardian and how it made him lose what little faith he had.)

Perhaps it's time to pop in and see my MP and ask for a sub-section in the new law, making it an imprisonable offence to incite hatred against religious affairs correspondents. Judging by yesterday's Queen's Speech, I'm certain of success. Expect an extradition warrant any day soon, Jimmy Akin! 

Comments

[emanuel appel]

a letter from America

Dear J Pearce

In the fight between freedom and equality, choose freedom. Freedom will more likely get you equality but not the other way around.

You decry the loss of traditional British liberties. This is entirely due to the European Left and social engineering. I have no quarrel with the average English/British guy bargaining together over wages. Hell, when you play the tourist in Morocco and India, you haggle with those people. Why not over your wages?

My big problem with the Left in Europe and the US is their social and foreign policies. The elites ( press, academia, political) love to force people to do A, B, C for "their own good". What arrogance!

In foreign affairs, they forget that their job is protecting the nation. Rather, they'd rather give up sovereignty to some Uber-Government in Brussels, Rome, the UN, etc so that the direct excercise of democracy becomes less and less of a check on their actions. They can always face the electorate and say " My hands are tied - this is a Brussels or a UN decision".

The best example of a local rapacious robber baron is Ken Livingstone of London. He has admirers where I live who drool over new ways to putting their hands into the people's pockets. Over here, they love the idea of spy cameras everywhere and taxing people when they drive into center city. Now, what kind of gay rights will there be with bathroom cameras?
How 'bout bedroom cameras where only the missionary position will be allowed, all else being sodomy?

[Christopher Johnson]

I've always wondered about something. If a lack of hospitality was why God wiped Sodom and Gomorrah off the map, then why does Bethlehem still exist?

[William Sulik]

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

Ezekiel 16:49-50 (New International Version)

http://tinyurl.com/26ktq6

[J Pearce]

I agree completely with Geoff (except for the bit about scatalogical language).

I think there is a huge difference between promoting equality, such that all law-abiding members of society can take part with equal status (which was the aim of the recent SOR's legislation) - and the repression of free speech (which is effectively what the proposed "inciting hatred" bill is about) with the threat of criminalisation.

I don't care if some people want to offend others. But I do care if they want to blow them up or harm them. In theory, we live in a society that has mechanisms which allow "the offended" to challenge any perceived injustice. If the challenge is valid, the offenders are usually sanctioned through social means (i.e. they are ignored when they next pipe up and make a comment). If the challenge cannot be validated, the "offended" get told to grow up!

The problem is, there is a lot of money to be made out of victim culture. I think that lawyers and politicians are engaged in a Faustian pact to ensure there is a never ending stream of legislation which justifies both parties employment (I can't think of much else that justifies politicians today).

We need the fourth estate to be a de facto regulator AND agent provocatuer to our political masters. Its not more censorship that’s required, Ruth, its more s**t-stirring! (with apologies to Geoff).

[Tom Jackson]

"My question is, am I being brave by posting it, standing up for freedom of speech? Or am I guilty of inciting hatred against homosexuals?"

Geoffrey has expressed what I believe is the most balanced and sensible response to this query. What interests me, in particular, is the point at which an open discussion on a subject - such as the acceptability of homosexual behaviour - becomes incitement. According to the Oxford dictionary, 'to incite' means to urge or stir up; in the case of a person, to urge them to action or to do something.

During the course of a debate, if I mention that to see two men kissing passionately in the street makes my stomach turn over and someone reading that comment is motivated to go out, search for a homosexual and then attack them, am I guilty of incitement?

If, as I have done in a comment on this blog, I suggest that homosexual behaviour is abnormal, am I guilty of incitement and is Ruth an accessory? Will this be the case if the proposed new law is passed?

There are many contributors who are critical where aspects of religious belief are concerned. If I could get a similar law on the statute books to classify Christians with homosexuals as a group under threat, would J Pearce then be guilty of incitement?

"I'm glad some people on your blog think they understand the mind of God and purport to be Christians as well."

I don't know if that is strictly true, Irene. I think as a Christian, a Jew or even a Muslim, we strive to understand and get as close to understanding the God we worship through that which has been revealed to us (in my case, through the Old and New Testaments, for example) and then we can be forgiven for taken a view on a subject based on that perspective. As a Christian, almost the first step you take is to realise that God is far beyond our understanding.

[David Kirwan]

My Biblical Hebrew grammar tells me (and so did the old nuns who once taught me) that 'yada'' can mean 'know' in both the ordinary sense and 'have sexual relations with'. If the Rabbinical tradition prefers in the context of the story of Sodom to take the word in its first - usual - sense, that seems quite good enough for me. You might paraphrase: 'Bring them out,' cried the mob, 'and if they're foreigners that we don't know, we'll lynch them.' As an aside we could note that in Luke 10:12 Jesus says if any village fails to welcome his disciples it will go worse with that village than with Sodom. Not a clincher, but it does bring the sin of Sodom into connection with failing to welcome strangers.

But while on the subject of the story of Sodom, it might be good to remember that Abraham bargained with God beforehand and got the promise that God would not destroy the town even if there were only ten just men in it. Couldn't it be enough for those who prefer the Sodomites to have been 'Sodomites' and who rate themselves just merely to be satisfied with saving the country thereby from the fate of Sodom?

But to return to Ruth's wider point, it does seem to me that to legislate to protect certain groups' sensibilities (not their life or freedom or property or right to employment, but sensibilities) is a sure recipe for sowing division within society.

[Chris Gillibrand]

PS
Genesis 19 5
And they called Lot, and said to him: Where are the men that came in to thee at night? bring them out hither, that we may know them:
Vocaveruntque Loth et dixerunt ei ubi sunt viri qui introierunt ad te nocte educ illos huc ut cognoscamus eos

is the basis for the assumption about the nature of the sin of sodom. After the blood transfusion case this week, based on a reading of OT verses, it is probably better however if individuals and particular churches do not seek to interpret such verses to fit their presuppositions either way.

[Chris Gillibrand]

Surely Mr Bates should have come away with a strong belief that except that the Lord build the house in vain do its builders labour after five years in Brussels prior to his religious affairs job. One does not even have to be a cynic to come to that conclusion here in Brussels.

[Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA]

I'm glad some people on your blog think they understand the mind of God and purport to be Christians as well.

Just doesn't add up to me!

[Geoffrey Smith]

"The real offence of Sodom and Gomorrah is supposed to have been lack of hospitality to visitors".
- Dr Irene Lancaster, 7 NOV 2007, 17:27:32

I can't see God destroying the two cities for passing up a chance to make money from visitors. It must have been something much more serious than that. As my friend, Mr Pearce, would say: It just doesn't add up.

[Andrew Brown]

It means "Angels in Sodom" ... I haven't looked at the piece. OH -- OK, it's a quick sermon on the Sodom story, suggesting that the inhabitants practised gang-rape on all strangers and wanted to do that to the Angels. This is, the writer concedes, not quite the same as the Pride parade, but it is what lies at teh foot of that slippery slope. No mention of Lot's generous offer of his daughters.

He Who Must Not Be Named

[Geoffrey Smith]

Ruth, you are being brave and standing up for freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech, however, is a civil right which belongs to everyone - including both homosexuals and Christians. To proscribe one in deference to the other is unjust, and a violation of free speech. Gays may not like their life-style being criticised by Christians, and we Christians may not like being sneered at as homophobes, but that is what free speech is all about. It necessarily causes offence to its intended listeners. Sadly, we seem to be living in a crybaby society, in which the slightest rebuke is regarded as a criminal offence. Certainly, it is, and should be, an offence to issue libellous and slanderous statements against anyone, and perhaps gratuitous insults and scatological language should be legally restrained, but this is far removed from the ordinary day-to-day verbal sparring that one experiences in the public forum.

[Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA]

The real offence of Sodom and Gomorrah is supposed to have been lack of hospitality to visitors.

This is what the rabbinic commentaries say, in any case.

[Shaun Clarkson]

You're OK Ruth, if everyone dangerously unqualified to do their job were sacked exactly how many would still be in work? I would never make it as a sub-editor, it's only on second reading that I realised the letter you refer to was from Rowan Atkinson rather than Rowan Williams (if only...)

Adding to the general furore today is the backlash from some elements of the gay community against the appointment of Rev Joel Edwards to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I fear that as the emphasis of our culture swings from freedom of speech to freedon from taking offence we will be the worse off for it.