Free speech and gay rights

A reader in Britain e-mails:

One of the constant complaints by pro-SSM readers on your blog is that your fears about the impact of SSM on free speech and freedom of religion are overblown. As you know, I tend to agree with you rather than your critics, despite my cautiously pro-SSM stance (although if I am honest I have been slowly returning to my neglected faith of late and am starting to think again).

My worries were confirmed by this story from here in Britain, which may interest you.

What has happened is this: the Labour government here brought forward a Bill that included clauses to ban incitement to hatred against homosexuals. Many people -- including, but definitely not limited to, traditional Christians -- felt that the wording was imprecise and might inhibit people from expressing opinions on the morality of sexual behaviour, for fear that what they said might be construed as inciting hatred (there have been numerous cases now in Britain of people being visited by the police and informally "warned" about incitement after expressing the orthodox Christian position on sexuality). So a member of the House of Lords put forward the following amendment to the Bill:

"In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred."

Very reasonable, you might think. But when the amended Bill went back to the House of Commons the government MPs voted to remove this "free speech" amendment. When the Bill returned to the Lords -- the two Houses often play legislative ping-pong in this way -- the Lords put it back in. This continued until the Commons, under the direction of the government, had removed the "free speech" clause four times. Yesterday the government finally gave in after a late vote in the Lords on Wednesday re-inserted the clause for the fourth time. The "free speech" clause will stay in the final Act of Parliament.

So, in short, what we have here is a supposedly liberal government consistently ordering its MPs to vote to deny explicit free speech protection to critics of homosexuality, lumping in such criticism with incitement to violence and hatred. Now of course the obvious rejoinder from your critics is that in the US this couldn't happen because of the First Amendment, but that's not really the point. The point is that, contrary to the wishful thinking of many on the pro-SSM side, there are plenty of members of our political and cultural elites who are willing to sacrifice free speech and the free exercise of religion on the altar of sexual liberation, when they get the power to do so.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that we'd see the same thing here, if not for the First Amendment, which bans so-called "hate speech" restrictions. What Americans don't understand, and what we in the media prefer not to report, is that in the coming legal regime, churches and religious institutions will face significant curtailment of their own activity, outside of speech itself, with regard to same-sex marriage and related phenomena. As the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington knows very well, no matter how vociferously SSM proponents try to deny it.

I'll say one good thing about the increasing legal hostility to Christianity in repaganizing Europe: it may serve to make the Orthodox churches wake up and realize that whatever divides Orthodoxy from Western Christianity pales before the great battle the remnants of the Church in Europe faces in the coming decades. See this from Greece. Time for as much unity as can be managed. I'm pleased that Kyrill, ,the Moscow patriarch, and Pope Benedict are moving closer. They're going to need each other. Given where we know this is going, and going fast, we all will.