Weblog: �ke Green's Hate Speech Conviction Overturned - Christianity Today Magazine

That's right: that Swedish pastor who preached against homosexuality and found himself convicted of "hate speech" just had his conviction thrown out--on the basis that he has a perfect right to say what he said, where he said it, and in the manner wherein he said it.

The appellate court's grounds for reversing the conviction are rather interesting. The intent of the law was to stop people from inciting others to beat up on homosexuals, but not to stifle all discussion about homosexuality. Well, we shall see whether this is the last of that case. In any event, this is the first time that I have ever seen a court throw out a conviction on the basis of "that's not what the law intended." If every law with unintended consequences could have some appellate court find in favor of certain defendants who were unintentionally caught in its toils, we wouldn't worry about unintended consequences, would we? But that would still put us all too dependent on a human judge for what the law meant. This still has the law meaning exactly what the court says it means, any time it says it.

Personally I prefer the American solution: declare such a law unconstitutional! Then again, what I'm really looking forward to is the Millennial Kingdom, where Jesus will be the Supreme Judge.