Bruce Bawer: Multiculturalism, Freedom of Speech and Appeasing Islam




brucebawer.com >>>

Pat Condell: Freedom Speech in Europe

DIGITAL JOURNAL: Opinion: The brilliantly honest Pat Condell about 'Free Speech' in Europe >>> R C Camphausen | Thursday, November 11, 2010

The New Old Turkey
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL – LETTERS: Regarding the Nov. 10 news article "EU gauges member readiness," it is regrettable that the current Turkish government refuses to recognize its continued shortcomings in the areas of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appeared quick to respond in terms of Turkey's patience and how long it might last, but he seems oblivious to the suffering of millions in a country where there is virtually no freedom of speech unless one supports the ruling AKP party's ultimate aim: an all-out Islamic state.

Would Mr. Davutoglu be so quick to respond to questions on whether there are any independent media at all in Turkey capable of reporting freely and without recrimination? Let us not forget that, during the recent debates about changes to Turkey's constitution, the opposition were denied equal and unbiased media access.

I sincerely hope the EU delegation has taken note of this, as well as of the restrictive religious practices currently imposed on Turkey's non-Muslim population. >>> Tayfun Balkan | Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Wilders Nominated for Free Speech Prize
RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE: Dutch Euro-MP Barry Madlener, a member of the far-right Freedom Party, has put forward his party leader Geert Wilders as a candidate for the Sakharov Prize.

The prize, named after the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, is awarded annually by the European parliament to individuals and organisations that have contributed significantly to freedom of speech.

"It's a scandal that someone in a European country should be prosecuted for defending a basic right such as freedom of speech," Mr Madlener commented. Mr Wilders is currently on trial in the Netherlands for inciting discrimination against Muslims through remarks in the press and his anti-Islamic short film Fitna. >>> © RNW | Wednesday, July 07. 2010

Dhimmitude! Danish Newspaper Provokes Uproar with Apology Over Muhammad Cartoon
There’s a fool born every minute! Shame on you, Mr Seidenfaden! Shame on your newspaper, too! It is to be hoped that the Danes will, from now on, boycott your newspaper. – Mark
TIMES ONLINE: A leading Danish newspaper was today accused of betraying the freedom of the press after breaking ranks with its rivals to offer an apology to Muslims for publishing a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban.

Politiken issued the apology after settling with a Saudi lawyer representing eight Muslim groups that complained after the cartoon was reprinted by 11 Danish papers in solidarity with the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who received death threats last year.

Outrage at the move was led by Denmark’s Prime Minister and by Mr Westergaard, 74, who survived an alleged assassination attempt by an Islamic axeman at his home last month.

Politiken responded that it was apologising for the offence caused, not the decision to publish, in an attempt to reduce tensions with the Muslim world.

Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the Prime Minister, expressed surprise at Politiken's move, saying he was worried that the Danish media were no longer “standing shoulder to shoulder” on the issue.

Mr Westergaard, who has round-the-clock security, added: “I fear this is a setback for the freedom of speech.” >>> David Charter, Europe Correspondent | Friday, February 26, 2010

THE GUARDIAN: Danish newspaper apologises in Muhammad cartoons row: Politiken widely condemned for agreeing to publish apology in return for Muslim organisations dropping legal action

A Danish newspaper apologised today to eight Muslim organisations for the offence it caused by reprinting controversial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, in exchange for their dropping legal action against the newspaper. >>> Lars Eriksen in Copenhagen | Friday, February 26, 2010

Stifling Free Speech Is Not Really Free
In protecting Muslims from those who offend them, the West ill-serves Islam and those Muslims who seek its reform. Muslims need untrammelled free speech to awaken to the awareness of how totalitarian and comatose is their culture. – Salim Mansur, QMI Agency
TORONTO SUN – Comment: Free speech is not merely an ornamental bauble found in liberal democratic societies. It is the well-fought ground upon which the structures of such societies have been constructed.

It is free speech in practice, or its ideal subscribed to, that has distinguished Europe and western civilization from all others past and present. Its absence or suppression is the main feature of totalitarian culture.

Yet free speech has never been entirely free from siege by special interests.

Except for the United States where free speech is constitutionally protected by the first amendment, the exercise of free speech can still be constrained by the guardians of public interests as we see in the case of the Dutch MP Geert Wilders, indicted and brought to court for offending Muslims in Holland.

The trial of Wilders is as much a step backward from the ideal of free speech as it is indicative of how free people willingly compromise their freedom by forgetting their history.

In indicting Wilders for hate speech, the Dutch, and their Western supporters, have turned their backs to the long line of defenders of free speech as the cornerstone of liberty, from Spinoza and Voltaire to Emile Zola. >>> Salim Mansur, QMI Agency | Thursday, February 4, 2010

Geert Wilders Launches Websites on Political Trial
PARTIJ VOOR DE VRIJHEID: Wednesday February 3rd 2010 Dutch politician Geert Wilders launches two websites on the political trial against him and the freedom of speech. From now on both the Dutch (www.wildersproces.nl) and the international public (www.wildersontrial.com) are able to keep up with the trials’ proceedings.

Both websites not only include the latest news on the trial but also provide background information on the trials’ participants, the summons, the cause and the importance of this trial for freedom of speech in the Netherlands and –possibly- for the whole of Europe.

Geert Wilders: “This trial is not just about me. It is about the future of freedom of speech in the Netherlands. The outcome of this trial affects the freedom of all Dutch citizens. With these websites, I want to make it possible for people to follow the latest developments concerning the trial.” [Source: Partij Voor De Vrijheid] | Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Wilders on Trial: A sledgehammer blow to the freedom of speech >>>

Het Wilders process: Aanslag op de vrijheid van meningsuiting >>>

Geert Wilders spreekt de rechtbank toe: Geert Wilder Speaks to the Court

Anti-Muslim Dutch Lawmaker's Trial Tests Freedom of Speech
TIME: A flamboyant populist and founder of a virulently anti-immigrant political party, Geert Wilders sees himself as a champion of free speech in the Netherlands. Others would disagree. Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, is in court this week to face five counts of inciting hatred and discrimination for describing Islam as a fascist religion and Moroccan youths as violent, and for calling for the banning of the Quran. The trial, which resumed Wednesday after a two-week break, is being seen as a test of the limits of free speech and the famously tolerant country's commitment to protecting minority rights.

Wilders, a 46-year-old with bleach-blond, bouffant hair, made international headlines in 2008 when he made a short film called Fitna, in which verses from the Quran were displayed against a background of violent film clips and images of terrorism by Islamic radicals. Described as "offensively anti-Islamic" by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the film led to protests in the Muslim world and prompted Britain to ban Wilders from entering the country. But it also brought Wilders more popularity at home. His Party for Freedom finished second in last year's European Parliament elections, winning 17% of the Dutch vote. His party also holds nine seats in the Dutch parliament.

Because of his extreme anti-Muslim views, Wilders is often compared to the leaders of Europe's other far-right parties, such as Nick Griffin of the British National Party and Jean-Marie Le Pen of France's National Front. But he claims (though his opponents strongly disagree) that his policies are rooted in the Dutch tradition of tolerance: he says that Islam is a threat to women's rights and he criticizes Muslims' anti-gay rhetoric. Now under 24-hour surveillance because of the many death threats he's received, Wilders told TIME last year that Islam itself stirs hatred. "The Quran is full of incitements to violence," he said. "Islam wants to dominate every part of life and society. It does not want to integrate or assimilate, but to dominate. It should not be compared to other religions, but with totalitarian ideologies, like communism or fascism." >>> Leo Cendrowicz | Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Douglas Murray – Geert Wilders: On Trial for Telling the Truth
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: There is nothing hyperbolic in stating that a trial which has just started in Holland will have unparalleled significance for the future of Europe. It is not just about whether our culture will survive, but whether we are even allowed to state the fact that it is being threatened.

The trial of Geert Wilders has garnered hardly any attention in the mainstream press here. Fortunately the blogosphere can correct some of this.

Wilders is a Dutch MP and leader of Holland’s fastest-growing party, the Party for Freedom. Just a few years ago he was the sole MP for his party. The latest polls show that his party could win the biggest number of seats of any party in Holland when the voters next go to the polls.

His stances have clearly chimed with the Dutch people. They include an end to the era of mass immigration, an end to cultural relativism, and an end to the perceived suborning of European values to Islamic ones. For saying this, and more, he has for many years had to live under round-the-clock security protection. Which you would have thought proves the point to some extent.

Now the latest attempt of the Dutch ruling class to keep Wilders from office has begun. Last week, apparently because of the number of complaints they have received (trial by vote anyone?) the trial of Wilders began.

The Dutch courts charge that Wilders ‘on multiple occasions, at least once, (each time) in public, orally, in writing or through images, intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion’.

I’m sorry? Whoa there, just a minute. The man’s on trial because he ‘offended a group of people’? I get offended by all sorts of people. I get offended by very fat people. I get offended by very thick people. I get offended by very sensitive people. I get offended by the crazy car-crash of vowels in Dutch verbs. But I don’t try to press charges.

Yet, crazily, this is exactly what is going on now in a Dutch courtroom. If found guilty of this Alice-in-Wonderland accusation of ‘offending a group of people’, Wilders faces up to two years in prison.

If anyone doubts the surreal nature of the proceedings now going on they should simply look through the summons which is available in an English translation here. It shows that Wilders is on trial for his film Fitna. And for various things he has said in articles and interviews in the Dutch press.

Now some people liked Fitna and some people didn’t. That’s a matter of choice. But by any previous interpretation it is not the job of courts in democratic countries to become film-critics. In fact it would create a very bad precedent. I thought the latest Alec Baldwin film stank. But I don’t think (though the temptation lingers) Baldwin should go to prison for it. Read on & comment here >>> Douglas Murray | Thursday, January 28, 2010

Why Isn't The BBC Reporting on the Geert Wilders Trial?
RICHMARK SENTINEL: Interesting to note that there seems to be no mention whatsoever of the Geert Wilders trial on The BBC website.

It is, of course, one of the most important political trials to have ever taken place in Europe, and yet there is silence from The BBC. Read On & Comment >>> | Saturday, January 23, 2010

Bruce Bawer: A Dark Day for the Enlightenment
CITY JOURNAL: The Geert Wilders trial is an affront to Western liberty.

Since 9/11, there has been a series of red-letter dates that should figure in any future history of the Islamization of Europe. One thinks, for example, of the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004, and of the general election three days later, in which Spanish citizens, apparently bowing to the terrorists’ wishes, voted in the Socialists, who had promised to pull the nation’s troops out of Iraq. One thinks, too, of the London bombings on July 7, 2005; of the international violence that followed the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s publication of cartoons of Mohammed on September 30, 2005; and of the shameful episode in which editor Vebjørn Selbekk, under intense pressure from craven Norwegian government leaders, apologized to a gathering of imams on February 10, 2006, for having bravely reprinted the cartoons.

Many of these red-letter dates have been concentrated in the Netherlands, a small country that once upon a time—not so long ago, in fact—was perceived around the world as a beacon of freedom and tolerance. The murder of professor, author, and Islam critic Pim Fortuyn in Hilversum on May 6, 2002, was followed by that of filmmaker, raconteur, and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam on November 2, 2004, and by the resignation of politician and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali from the Dutch parliament on May 16, 2006. Ali’s resignation came as the result of a cowardly effort by her legislative colleagues to remove from their ranks the voice of a heroine of liberty, whom they plainly perceived as nothing more than a troublemaker in a country whose political and cultural elite has, in modern times, been less driven by principle than by consensus and compromise.

Today, alas, is also a red-letter date in the terrible history of this period, and once again the setting is the Netherlands. The figure at the center of today’s infamy is Islam critic Geert Wilders, member of the Dutch Parliament, head of the Freedom Party, and currently the most popular politician in the country—a man who, like Fortuyn eight years ago, looks like a strong prospect to be his nation’s next prime minister. Yet if Wilders enjoys strong backing from the Dutch electorate, he is also—again like Fortuyn, and for that matter like van Gogh and Hirsi Ali—despised by the Dutch political, cultural, educational, media, and business establishment, which has plainly decided not to fight the Netherlands’ Islamization but rather to help the process go as smoothly as possible.

Members of this establishment have made many efforts to silence Wilders. When he announced in November 2007 that he was making a film about the Koran, members of the Dutch cabinet expressed regret that they had no authority to stop him. During the same month, a leading member of the Dutch establishment, Doekle Terpstra, organized a coalition of influential Dutchmen whose goal was to exclude Wilders’s views from the public square. “Wilders is the evil,” said Terpstra, “and that evil must be stopped.” In January 2008, a long list of celebrated Dutchmen signed a statement that appeared on the front page of the newspaper Trouw condemning Wilders’s “intolerance” and calling for “a new balance between the values of then and now.” Bernard Welten, Amsterdam’s police chief, held talks with imams about Wilders’s film; the country’s national counterterrorism coordinator proposed that Wilders leave the country after its release. Commenting on Wilders, a long line of top Dutch politicians declared, in effect, that freedom of speech didn’t include the freedom to offend. In April 2007, intelligence and security officials had called Wilders on the carpet and demanded that he tone down his rhetoric about Islam; in February 2008, the Dutch ministers of justice and foreign affairs summoned him to a similar dressing-down. Wilders’s film, Fitna, appeared online on March 27, 2008. … >>> Bruce Bawer | Wednesday, January 20, 2010

English translation: Summons of the Accused >>>

Bruce Bawer blogs here

Fitna the Movie

The Wilders Trial: Voices From Europe
BRUSSELS JOURNAL: In the summer of 2008, as many readers know, I traveled to six European countries to interview politicians dedicated to breaking, halting and/or reversing the Islamization of their countries (here is a collection of some of the writings inspired by the trip).

One of those politicians was Geert Wilders, then the little-known (outside of the Netherlands) leader of a very small party, PVV, the Party for Freedom. Only a year and a half later, Wilders is the most famous Dutchman in the world, and his party rivals the current ruling party in popularity. Wilders is also now on trial for his political life and liberty – hardly a coincidence.

But Wilders is not the only politician in Europe fighting Islamization. In my travels, I learned there were other countries where extremely courageous men and some notable women had entered the democratic arena to defend Western liberties against the onslaught of sharia (Islamic law), and with electoral success. In interviewing such politicians, I was much impressed with their political and, in these times of jihad violence, physical courage. Sadly, it remains the case that no US politicians speak with either the candor or understanding of the Islamic threat besetting the West that at least some of their European counterparts do.

With Wilders' trial begining today, I contacted three of the politicians I interviewed on my trip and asked them for their thoughts today. They have obliged – and in English, which is worth noting. In alphabetical order, they are Filip Dewinter, leader of the Vlaams Belang party in Belgium, Oskar Freysinger, a member of Swiss parliament for the Swiss People's Party (lately in the news for the recent victorious Swiss referendum banning minaret construction in Switzerland), and Morten Messershmidt, a member of European Parliament for the Danish People's Party. >>> Diana West | Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Bat Ye’or: Politics and Freedom
ATLAS SHRUGS: Muslims might feel insulted by Geert Wilders’ opinions on Islam. However, Geert Wilders and non-Muslims feel insulted – threatened — by the hostile and negative opinions on them enshrined in Muslim holy books, laws and customs. These are not hidden or dismissed as outdated, but continuously and proudly published, taught and publicly expounded throughout the world — without being opposed by Muslim leaders. Westerners have been conditioned by their governments, their media, the Palestinisation of their culture and societies, to be the culprit and to accept without a murmur the continuous harassment of the permanent terrorist threat. Such terrorism has taken already many innocent lives and wounded countless others since it started, in the 1960s, in Europe with the collaboration of Palestinians and Nazi groups murdering Jews and Israelis.

In view of an aggressive indigenous and foreign terrorism within the Netherlands itself, it is clear that Geert Wilders is answering a provocation against him that obliges him to live under permanent security controls. How is it possible that in the XXIe century, in a democratic and peaceful Europe, some people, politicians, intellectuals, cartoonists or others, need 24-hour security when they have done nothing but lawfully express themselves ? Will self-censorship define our culture? >>> Bat Ye’or | Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Update on Our Hero in Amsterdam – “Geert Akbar”! Geert Wilders: 'I want Muslim Fanatic to Speak in My Defence'
TIMES ONLINE: Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-Right MP, has demanded that his race hate trial should hear evidence from the fanatic who used the Koran to justify killing the director of an anti-Islamic film.

It marked an incendiary opening to the landmark case that has divided the Netherlands over the limits of freedom. Mr Wilders, 46, who is accused of incitement and discrimination, asked for 18 witnesses to be called in his defence, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the man who stabbed and shot Theo Van Gogh in an Amsterdam street in 2004.

The Van Gogh murder left a deep scar on the national conscience. It helped to change the mood of tolerance of Islam, and boosted Mr Wilders’s popularity.

Mr Wilders, whose Party for Freedom came second in the European elections last summer, faces a 70-page charge sheet covering five counts of breaking Dutch law in more than 100 public statements — for example, by likening the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and calling for an end to the “Islamic invasion”. He could be fined or jailed if convicted.

The alleged offences include Mr Wilders’s film Fitna, which shows images of 9/11 and beheadings interspersed with verses from the Koran. It ends with a clip of the controversial Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

At the opening day of the trial the prosecution objected to the request to hear from Bouyeri, and the panel of four judges adjourned until February 3 to consider which witnesses to call. “This case is about more than Mr Wilders,” Bram Moszkowicz, his lawyer, told the court. “It touches us all. It is such an important and principled question that could have far-reaching consequences.”

Mr Moszkowicz argued that the witnesses Mr Wilders wanted to call would prove that what he said was not simply inoffensive but true. He suggested that Bouyeri, a dual Moroccan-Dutch national, would be key to the case because he was a fervent Muslim who carried a Koran during his trial and defended his crime by claiming that Islam permitted violence against unbelievers. >>> David Charter in Amsterdam | Thursday, January 21, 2010

Westergaard Wants to Meet His Would-be Killer
BBC: Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard says he wants to meet the man accused of trying to kill him.

Mr Westergaard has been the target of at least three murder plots after drawing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. He was attacked in his home on New Year's Day.

After spending two weeks in a safe house, he has now returned home.

Malcolm Brabant reports. Watch BBC video >>> | Tuesday, January 19, 2010

BBC: What the Muhammad cartoons portray: Twelve caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in 2005 had a huge impact around the world, with riots in many Muslim countries the following year causing deaths and destruction - so what do the drawings actually say? >>> | Saturday, January 02, 2010

Britons Are Suspicious Towards Muslims, Study Finds
THE TELEGRAPH: The British public are concerned at the rise of Islam in the UK and fear that the country is deeply divided along religious lines, according to a major survey.

The Finsbury Park Mosque, London. Photo: The Telegraph
Is there any wonder? Who the hell wanted religious diversity anyway? Whoever thought up the idea must have been a naïve idiot! Muslims certainly don’t want diversity. In their eyes, everyone must submit to Allah, and call Muhammad the seal of prophets. What fools we have been to swallow this BS! There is but one possible result of this experiment: Bloodshed on the streets of the United Kingdom! – © Mark

More than half the population would be strongly opposed to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, the study found.

A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.

Only a quarter of Britons feel positive towards Muslims, while more than a third report feeling “cool” towards them.

The findings, to be published later this month in the respected British Social Attitudes Survey, show that far greater opposition to Islam than to any other faith and reveal that most people are willing to limit freedom of speech in an attempt to silence religious extremists.

David Voas, professor of population studies at Manchester University, who analysed the data, said that people were becoming intolerant towards all religions because of “the degree to which Islam is perceived as a threat to social cohesion”.

He said: “Muslims deserve to be the focus of policy on social cohesion, because no other group elicits so much disquiet.”

The “size and visibility” of Islamic communities has led to serious concerns about their impact on British society, Prof Voas concludes.

“This apparent threat to national identity (or even, some fear, to security) reduces the willingness to accommodate free expression.

“Opinion is divided, and many people remain tolerant of unpopular speech as well as distinctive dress and religious behaviour, but a large segment of the British population is unhappy about these subcultures.” >>> Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent | Saturday, January 09, 2010

Christian Hotel Manager in Court Accused of Asking Hijab-wearing Guest: 'Are You a Terrorist and a Murderer?'
MAIL ONLINE: Two Christian hoteliers went on trial yesterday accused of insulting a Muslim convert by branding Mohammed a 'warlord' and telling her she was living in 'bondage'.

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang allegedly asked 60-year-old guest Ericka Tazi if she was a terrorist and a murderer after she came down to breakfast wearing an Islamic headscarf.

The white, British-born grandmother, who was staying at the couple's hotel while undergoing medical treatment, told a court the pair had shouted abuse at her, leaving her shocked and traumatised.

However the couple's barrister challenged her account, suggesting she had worn Islamic dress to provoke the Vogelenzangs and that they merely engaged in a legitimate discussion about their faiths.

The couple, who run The Bounty House 
Hotel in Aintree, Liverpool, both deny the unusual charge of committing a religiously aggravated public order offence, which carries a maximum fine of £5,000.

Christians gathered outside Liverpool magistrates' court to support the couple.

Mrs Tazi, who suffers from the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia, spent a month at the hotel earlier this year while attending a course of therapy at a nearby hospital.

The former Roman Catholic from Warrington, who converted to Islam last year, gave evidence after swearing an oath to Allah and kissing the Koran. >>> | Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Germany’s Nazi Exception: Constitutional Court OKs Curtailing of Free Speech
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Germany's constitution strongly and explicitly protects the freedom of speech. Still, the country's highest court has now said that -- given the injustice and horrors of the Nazi regime -- it is constitutional to make an exception that bans speech glorifying Hitler's ideology.

Wunsiedel is a small town of about 10,000 in the northeastern corner of Bavaria. Every year, on one particular day, this otherwise sleepy town is on high alert. In late August, thousands of people come here from all over Germany and abroad. Dressed in black, these neo-Nazis come to march in commemoration of Rudolf Hess, the Hitler deputy and convicted war criminal who has been buried here since 1987.

Some of the locals board up their houses and get out of town. Others bring banners to protest the parade and even block it with vehicles used for transporting liquid manure. In 2004, the town's mayor, Karl-Willi Beck, launched a campaign called "Wunsiedel is colorful, not brown." Together with town councilors, church officials and citizens, he tried to block the streets. A group of skinheads insulted him as a "traitor to his fatherland" and a "grave desecrator." The neo-Nazis threatened to run him out of town.

But, since 2005, he hasn't had to deal with the crowds. In that year, the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's federal parliament, passed an amendment that strengthened the legal article dealing with incitement to hatred. Otto Shily, who was Germany's interior minister at the time, said that it was done "in solidarity with the democratic public of Wunsiedel." The amendment was meant to make it easier to outlaw neo-Nazi commemorative marches in Wunsiedel and elsewhere. The amendment worked. And, last year, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed the decision upholding a ban on such assemblies based on the new law.

Still, Jürgen Rieger, the recently deceased Hamburg-based lawyer and neo-Nazi who organized the Hess commemorations, was determined to keep marching. To do so, he placed his hope in Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, based in Karlsruhe. Sure, the judges had already dismissed a number of Rieger's expedited motions. But, in this case, they had expressly determined that the new ban "raised a series of difficult constitutional issues." However, they also felt that these were not the type of questions that could be dealt with in expedited proceedings. Challenging the Amendment >>> Dietmar Hipp | Wednesday, November 18, 2009

People Must Be Free to Hold Intolerant Views about Homosexuality
THE TELEGRAPH: Ministers seem set on eroding yet another safeguard to our liberty, says Philip Johnston.

An important blow for free speech was struck in the dying hours of the last parliamentary session, despite a desperate rearguard action by the Government to quash it. Ministers wanted to remove a protection inserted into a law, passed only last year, which made it an offence to express hatred of homosexuals. But they were twice beaten back in the Lords and eventually ran out of time.

They may try again in the coming session that starts on Wednesday, the last before the general election.

This story encapsulates much that has been so pernicious about the 12 years of misrule to which the country has been subjected. No one can remember a government returning in the very next session to try to undo something to which it had agreed (albeit reluctantly) in the preceding parliamentary term. The free speech protection was proposed by Lord Waddington, a former Home Secretary. It stated: "For the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices, shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred."

This was done for a purpose. There are too many instances of people being questioned by the police under existing public order legislation for holding views that may be considered offensive or intolerant for yet another measure to be passed without setting out the circumstances in which it is meant to be used. These instances include a grandmother, Pauline Howe, who was visited by two constables because she wrote to her local council to complain about a gay rights march and what she considered a "public display of indecency". She was told she might have committed a "hate crime".

A similar experience befell Joe and Helen Roberts, a Christian couple lectured by Lancashire police on the evils of "homophobia" after criticising gay rights in a letter to Wyre Borough Council. A few years ago, Lynette Burrows, a family campaigner, was the target of a police inquiry after saying on the radio that she did not believe homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the former head of the Muslim Council, had his collar felt, as did the Bishop of Chester for making remarks in a religious context that no sane person could have taken as stirring up hatred against homosexuals. The most preposterous example was the Oxford student who was arrested and threatened with prosecution for calling a police horse gay. >>> Philip Johnston | Monday, November 16, 2009

Ed West: Homophobia Is a Right, Too
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: As historical analysis goes, I’m not sure it’s quite up there with Carr or Elton. According to Pauline Howe, the “perverted sexual practises” of “sodomites” were responsible for “the downfall of every empire”. I always thought the British Empire fell because of the exhaustion caused by the First World War, or specifically the fall of Singapore in World War 2, or perhaps the rise of Third World nationalism and American pressure. Maybe I was wrong and it was all down to Greek “practises”.

Still, whether or not one agrees with Mrs Howe’s radical revisionist history, or her objecting to the Norwich Gay Pride march (a phrase that personally fills me with crushing ennui, rather than any moral objection), Norfolk Constabulary’s decision to treat is as a “hate incident” is deeply sinister.

This is by no means the first incident of its kind – several people, all Christians (generally Evangelicals) have been questioned by the police over objecting to homosexuality. It is a part of a wider trend of illiberalism across Europe that has taken place in the past decade, starting with Holocaust denial laws and in Britain reaching its nadir (so far) with the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, one of the most illiberal laws concerning religion since the days when men with buckles on their hats ruled the law.

This soft totalitarianism does not come with gulags or death camps, but rather the petty harassment of individuals by the authorities. Its victim include countryside campaigner Robin Page, arrested for saying he wanted the same rights as a “black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver”. Or Codie Stott, a 14-year-old schoolgirl who was arrested because she did not want to sit at a table with three girls who were speaking Urdu. Or the taxpayers of Wales, who forked out the £3,800 that police spent investigating “anti-Welsh” remarks by Anne Robinson.

Mike Judge of the Christian Institute, the group helping Mrs Howe, says: “Whether people agree or disagree with Mrs Howe’s views, everyone who cares about freedom should be alarmed at the police action.” Read on and comment here >>> Ed West | Monday, October 26, 2009