According to the Washington Post,
A Swedish appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of a Pentecostal pastor found guilty of violating the country’s strict hate-speech law with a sermon that labeled homosexuality “a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society” and equated it with pedophilia.
The appeals court ruled that Sweden’s law, which was enacted after World War II to protect Jews and other minorities from neo-Nazi propaganda and was only recently extended to gays, was never intended to stifle open discussion of homosexuality or restrict a pastor’s right to preach. . . .
Thanks to How Apealing for the pointer.
UPDATE: Just to make clear, this is good news but not great news; great news would be if these sorts of “hate speech” laws were repealed altogether. A summary of the decision by the Swedish-speaking blogger Stefan Geens suggests that the decision would provide a good deal of protection for discussion about homosexuality, including denunciation of homosexuality — but not complete protection, and vaguely defined incomplete protection at that. Still, things look better for free speech in Sweden than they did before this decision. (Thanks to reader Dennis Josefsson for the pointer to Stefan Geens’ site.)
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