Top News
Home |
WikiNews |
Finance |
Archive
Blogs:
New York
InstaPundit
PickTheBrain
Movies
WebTV
Access Hollywood
DailyKos
Interesting Thing of the Day
LifeHack
Dumb Little Man
TreeHugger
Random Good Stuff
Simply Recipes
Swedish pastor appeals hate-crime conviction for antigay sermon
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Jump to: navigation, search
January 20, 2005
Stockholm – A Swedish pastor, whose sermon against homosexuality led to a hate-crime conviction, presented his appeal to the court yesterday. The district court had previously found him guilty of "aiming to disregard homosexuals as a group" and sentenced him to one month's imprisonment.
Åke Green, 63, denies that he intended to agitate against homosexuals. "I've only enlightened people about what the Bible has to say," he said. The legal defence has focused on freedom of religion. Green's lawyer, Percy Bratt, has argued that fundamental human rights are at stake and that Green must be allowed to interpret the Bible without interference from secular authorities. The prosecutor, Kjell Yngvesson, argues that Green crossed the line when he went from merely quoting the bible to "gathering everything from the Bible that condemns homosexuality" and added his own opinions.
In his sermon, which was also distributed in writing, Green argued that homosexuality wasn't "an inborn desire" but "people in the hands of evil powers." The district court referred to four specific issues in its finding:
1) Green had argued that the global AIDS epidemic wouldn't have occurred without homosexuality.
2) He made a connection between sex with animals and homosexuality.
3) He made a conncection between pedophilia and homosexuality.
4) He used the phrase "freely I leave purity and accept impurity" with reference to homosexuality.
[]
Refrences
|
