This is far LESS subjective than cherry-picking incidents and making judgements about the society in which they occurred.
You don't seem to understand how legal systems work - What you can prosecute one person for you can prosecute anyone else for.
If a pastor in Sweden can be prosecuted for publicly declaring his Biblical views on homosexuality, then anyone else in Sweden can.
So you can't claim this is just an isolated instance when the law is there, ready to be used whenever the government wants to persecute a Christian who is publicly bucking too loudly against the status quo.
The only thing that stopped them from jailing him was not Swedish law, but EU law.
It wasn't an anti-religious law. They simply don't grant additional protections to religions. They are subject to the same hate speech laws as anyone else.
What you, again, don't realize, is that "hate speech" can be defined in a way that prevents people from merely expressing their belief that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.
No crime is being committed other than offending people who don't want to hear an opposing viewpoint.
Are you saying you are comfortable with thought-crime laws that silence peaceful dissenting speech?
And your version of reality is pretty damn subjective, by the way. He didnt teach a message of tolerance for sinners, thats for sure...
The only intolerant people in these situations are the "tolerant" leftists who cannot tolerate opposing Christian viewpoints, so they seek to use the law to silence Christians and prevent them from living according to their religious convictions.
Christians aren't the ones suing gay bakers demanding they write scriptures from the old testament about homosexuality on their cakes.
Christians aren't the ones passing laws which would jail people for saying they think homosexuality is perfectly ok.
If I thought for a moment that the crap he was talking is a true Christian message, I'd become anti-Christian overnight. Please allow me the comfort of thinking it's possible to teach about Christ without denouncing gays as possible animal rapists and pedophiles. But whatever...he's on the 'right team' so defend him if you must.
Your statements don't reflect the spirit or even really the content of what he wrote when put in context, and rather than base your opinion of what he said on a simple news article that quotes only a couple lines you should first read the sermon for yourself:
Pastor Åke Green's sermon on homosexuality
China? CHINA???
You're conflating China and Sweden in terms of freedom?
You didn't factually dispute my analogy, which remains true. You are using the power of the state to pick and choose what parts of the Bible you think are ok for pastors to teach.
What you ban has changed, but the principle is the same.
For what its worth, Cato puts them 141st in the world for freedom (of 159) and gives them 2.5/10 for religious freedom.
This is a good example of why quoting some group's opinion of what religious freedom looks like is a useless exercise as far as this thread is concerned.
Any country that believes they are in the position of being able to dictate what pastors can teach from the Bible is in some of the most dangerous territory possible as far as religious liberty goes. The freedom to teach the entire truth of the Bible to people is central to the mandate that Christians disciple the nations to obey Jesus.
It starts with one issue, but once the principle is established the door is opened for a cascade of future restrictions on whatever else the government decides they don't want the people to hear from the Bible.
As I said, they consider the mouth of the speaker and the ear of the listener to both have rights, and try to balance those.
The why doesn't really matter as far as this topic is concerned - China has a "why" behind their censorship too. They consider collective stability and state loyalty more important than an individual's right to speak about submission to the authority of Jesus, without which you have no true Gospel message.
But just because they have a reason doesn't mean their reason is a morally right one.
They're not shutting down Christianity.
Only the parts they find offensive.
And what they find offensive can always be added to.
Competing ideas? You can go to Sweden and argue against the government all you like.
The pastor just tried arguing against the government's sanction of homosexuality by using the Bible and they found him guilty, intending to jail him, for doing so.
They have laws against hate speech.
Define what separates hate speech from expressing an opinion.
Define it both according to your personal opinion, and according to Swedish law.
The problem with these kinds of laws is that they can easily be used to silence legitimate dissent on particular issues. So merely saying you think homosexuality is morally wrong becomes a crime in itself.
This was neither a directed instance of suppression of religion, nor of suppressing subversion.
The Swedish supreme court says you're wrong - They specifically declined to affirm the lower courts ruling of his guilt on the basis that it would be struck down by EU freedom of religion laws. The judge basically admitted that the Swedish law was being rightly applied in this instance, but that the Swedish law violated his freedom of religion and thus would not stand up in an EU court.
It is also not representative of any pattern.
Maybe you aren't aware of this being in Australia - but in the USA there is a concerted and intentional effort on the part of homosexual lobbying groups to silence and punish anyone who would exercise their religious liberty on this issue. Businesses are sued, boycotted, and there is a major push to indoctrinate society through the media and universities to accept that sexual preference and gender identity choices are equivalent to race - deserving the same kinds of legal protections. But the USA doesn't even have hate speech laws when it comes to issues like race.
So, although our constitution is too strong to allow their efforts at silencing dissenting viewpoints to be backed by the force of law; there is a major push on college campuses across the US to stifle, silence, or even ban any kind of speech that the left deems to be out of sync with their worldview. They will use whatever academic, media, or economic pressures they can to shut down politically offensive speech - usually through various means of intimidation. They are some of the most intolerant people you will ever meet in terms of accepting people with differing points of view. They are so convinced that they are the most tolerant people in the world that they cannot tolerate your intolerance of their viewpoints. It's a fundamentally dangerous mindset because they think they are so right that people who disagree with them need to be stopped from saying anything else to the contrary. The truth is, they are afraid of having to compete in the arena of open ideas and discourse, where they will lose. They don't want debate, they just want their opposition taken out of the picture by force. They have far more in common with revolutionary socialist dictatorships than they do with our founding fathers, in that regard.
So, yes, it is a part of a pattern because there are organized networks across the country who are actively pushing for ways to silence conservative opinions on LBGTQ issues. The same motivations exist in other western european countries, which is why you do end up prosecutors in Sweden who are motivated to use hate crimes laws to persecute a pastor for expressing an opinion publicly that is considered to be politically intolerable.
Instead, it was an instance of a pulpit not providing and additional protection under law to anyone else. I like that. People should be treated the same.
This isn't an issue about fair application of the law - It's about whether or not the law was morally right or even sound to begin with.
An unjust law applied equally across society doesn't make the law just, it only spreads the injustice to more people (I will point out that God is the one who defines what is just, just as God is the one who defines what is right. So there is such a thing as objectively unjust laws).
But the preacher believes it to be a literal truth, and made comment as to the nature of homosexuals which go beyond biblical teaching.
I welcome you to read his actual sermon and then prove through a sound exegesis of scripture why what he said is wrong.
