More attempts to suppress dissent in Europe:

One of Belgium’s leading civil rights groups has announced it intends to sue Belgian cardinal Gustaaf Joos for violating the country’s anti-discrimination laws.

Joos said in a recent magazine interview that he believed that 90-95 percent of gay people were “sexual perverts” and that the remainder needed help.

The Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism (CEOFAR), which receives government funding, said that it had decided to sue the cardinal because it found his views “unacceptable”.

The organisation argued that in its opinion, such statements were illegal in Belgium, which has tough anti-discrimination laws. . . .

     I disagree with the cardinal’s views, and with the way he expresses those views. But what conduct is proper and what is improper, what is moral and what is immoral, are precisely the subjects that a free people should be freely debating.

     Not long ago, that homosexuality was a perversion was the orthodox view. Free speech changed that; the gay rights movement, like the racial and sexual equality movements, was a triumph of free speech and public persuasion. Now some people in that movement are trying to restrict others’ free speech, to lock in their gains and to silence dissenters from the new orthodoxy. Understandable, as a matter of human politics and psychology — but still improper.

     In 1984, Irving Kristol said, “I don’t think the advocacy of homosexuality really falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of pornography does.” (Quoted in Sex and God in American Politics; What Conservatives Really Think, Pol’y Rev., Summer 1984, at 12, 24.) That was wrong then (and I hope he no longer believes it). Its flip side is wrong now.

     (Thanks to Clayton Cramer for the pointer.)