ADF: Worldwide Outcry Influenced Swedish Pastor's Hate Speech Trial
by Allie Martin
December 9, 2005
(AgapePress) - - An attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) says international exposure and pressure played a major role in a recent decision by Sweden's Supreme Court not to convict a pastor of committing a "hate speech" crime after he preached a sermon offering a biblical perspective on homosexual sin.
Last week Sweden's highest court unanimously decided to acquit Pastor Ake Green, who had been charged with hate speech in connection with a July 2003 sermon he preached at his church and later had published in a local newspaper. Arrested, charged, and initially convicted, Green was given one month in jail, a sentence he appealed.
An appellate court overturned Green's conviction on February 11 of this year. However, on March 9, the Swedish Prosecutor appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which acquitted the pastor on November 29.
ADF chief counsel Ben Bull says Swedish officials took notice of the extensive international press the case generated. He says this whole affair has been "a lesson that we need to be involved in what's happening in Europe with respect to the persecution of the Christian faith."
Under Swedish law, Bull points out, any person who shows disrespect for a person's sexual orientation may be sentenced up to four years in prison. He says things could have gone very differently for Pastor Green in the courts, but public outcry made a difference in the outcome of the legal controversy.
"If enough people make enough noise, even the enemies of the Christian faith sit up and take notice," the ADF lawyer asserts. "Most pundits who followed this case would have predicted that, had Christians around the world not paid a lot of attention to this -- publicized the case, got it into the Christian and secular media -- there's no doubt in everyone's mind that [Ake Green] would have been convicted and put in jail for doing nothing more than preaching the gospel in his own church."
Bull believes Christians worldwide who stood up and spoke out on Green's behalf were instrumental in the Swedish preacher's ultimate acquittal. To date, the 64-year-old minister still pastors his Pentecostal church in the southeastern city of Borgholm.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
