by Amy Beange

A pastor in Germany was recently suspended by his denomination, the Bremische Evangelical Church (BEK), and convicted of sedition by a German court, following a criminal complaint regarding statements about homosexuality made during a marriage seminar in 2019. “All around walk the criminals of the Christopher Street Day [the Berlin Pride March],” Pastor Olaf Latzel said. “All this gender filth is an attack against God’s order of creation; it is demonic and satanic.”

The court found Pastor Latzel guilty of sedition for having taken actions that could “disrupt public peace and incite hatred against homosexual people,” said the spokesman for the Bremen public prosecutor’s office. Latzel’s lawyer, on the other hand, described the sentence as “the opening of a door to restrict freedom of speech.”

Freedom of religion is the foundational freedom because it encompasses the individual’s freedom to hold and practice his, or her, convictions. It assumes that each adult is a moral agent ultimately accountable to God, not to other people. Restrictions placed on religious speech and religious practice are tantamount to restrictions on how people can obey God, whose authority is seen by believers to supersede that of government. We may refer to freedom of religion as “freedom of conscience” and get the same gist across. Freedom of conscience permits people to live as they see fit, according to their own convictions.

If we have freedom of conscience, i.e., the ability to follow our own convictions, then freedom of speech naturally follows. There is no point having the freedom to believe what you will and practice what you will if you do not have the freedom to talk about it. 

The very definition of freedom requires that restrictions on speech be limited to as few as possible. People come to wildly different convictions about many things. What is dearly loved by one may be despised by another. But logically, if we desire freedom to express our convictions, we must extend that same freedom to others—even if their convictions are distasteful to us. This view is captured in the phrase: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." 

Although freedom of speech is hailed and valued around the world, few would agree that all restrictions must be lifted. We make it illegal to shout “Fire!” in a theatre, for instance, because such speech can result in “clear and present danger.” In real-life cases people have been trampled to death. Until recently Canadian law was prepared to limit prohibited speech in order to protect the Charter right to freedom of expression. For example, speech is deemed illegal only if it contains a call to illegal action, i.e., you may say insulting things about someone at a rally but unless you incite people to action (“Go and burn their house down!”) your speech is not illegal.

As I have stated, throughout the West this has been the reasoning behind the strongest policies enacted for protection of speech in the past. But now we are seeing a shift in the standard of what constitutes “clear and present danger.” Now through the means of “Hate Speech” laws we condemn words that might lead to hurt feelings, or that might lead to action at some future point. Saying, for instance, “the Pride March is satanic,” could conceivably make people feel hatred toward gays and attack them. Therefore, all such statements must be subject to penalty.

Thus, governments have widened the spectrum of what sort of speech poses a threat. Even hurting someone’s feelings can no longer be allowed. In the case of Pastor Latzel, the judge could not convict him of instigating a riot because no riot occurred. Instead, he was convicted for having done something “that could disrupt the peace” (italics added).

This puts me in mind of the 2002 film Minority Report in which psychics who can foresee murders are used to inform the authorities, who then arrest the “suspects” before they commit the crime. These psychics are part of what is termed the “pre-crime” unit. No crime has been committed, but the accused are incarcerated as though the crime has taken place. 

That is somewhat analogous to what happened in Germany. Pastor Latzel has been convicted for a negative outcome that never happened. The parallel is perfect. In the movie, the potential criminal is removed from the streets before being able to carry out the crime, while Pastor Latzel has been sentenced with no evidence of the public peace being disturbed or of anyone being incited to hatred. This raises a question. If no hate crime is committed, how does the court measure whether someone has been incited?

According to the ruling handed down by the presiding judge in Pastor Latzel’s case, the pastor had “incited hatred against homosexuals and intersex people in a so-called marriage seminar.” Therefore, “His statements were sentimental and could be understood as a license to act against these people.” All sorts of questions arise. Since no one attending the marriage seminar followed up the pastor’s speech by attacking anyone, how could the judge assume he knew what they had felt?

Do we see what has happened here? The pastor was convicted for saying something that might provoke some to take some sort of action at some future time. This is in no way the same as someone shouting “Fire!” in an enclosed venue where there is a demonstrable danger, based on past cases, of actual, imminent bodily harm. In the pastor’s case, there is no demonstrable danger—what pool of experience can be referred to in which a person making similar statements led to others committing bodily harm? Could the court point out that the people who attended the seminar immediately went out and attacked homosexuals? Not at all. 

What the pastor did, in fact, was to express the traditional Christian view of sexuality, in which homosexual behaviour constitutes a distortion of what God intended. The President of the Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations wrote a petition asking the German denomination to reinstate Pastor Latzel to his preaching and pastoral duties:

“While the language Pastor Latzel used may have been shocking to some, both Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions support his statements regarding the heterosexual order of God’s creation, the limitation of marriage to one man and one woman united before God, and that homosexual orientations are not in accord with God’s order of creation.”

Germany is the cradle of the Reformation out of which grew the resolution that “scripture alone” (Sola Scriptura) is the final and infallible authority for all faith and practice, so it is strange that its own evangelical denomination would censure a pastor for teaching something German Christians have believed for centuries.

But apart from that, Pastor Latzel’s words are the expression of his conscience. His convictions might be repugnant to some, but nevertheless, they are his convictions. If simply expressing the sentiment that homosexual behaviour is wrong amounts to an incitement of hatred, even at a specifically Christian gathering, what’s left? How are we able to criticize anything? Being critical means being able to judge between options, to make statements about truth and falsity, good and evil, right and wrong. We may come to different conclusions about these things but what is served by silencing certain views? If a pastor teaches homosexual acts are immoral, his hearers are free to accept or reject what he says and are free to choose their own behaviour. Nothing in what he said constitutes a clear and present danger comparable to shouting “Fire!” in a theatre. 

The German court’s ruling clearly oversteps any sort of minimal restriction on free speech that intends to protect people in such cases of imminent danger. Now, the standard is “will this stir up someone’s feelings enough to possibly incite them to action?” But who decides what views are acceptable? Who decides which critiques are valid? Who decides which critiques will stir up hatred and possibly incite violence and which will not? 

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we are simply trying to eliminate things that will stir up hatred. “Homosexuality is against God’s created order” is a statement that offends many. But so is “religion is a virus.” In trying to eliminate hatred toward gays are we ignoring hatred toward people of faith? Are such efforts to censure evenly spread? Or are they biased? 

This is the price of free speech—having to put up with the expression of views you find repugnant. When we give up free speech, we give up the freedom to be offended. That might not seem like a great freedom to have but think about it, who gains when we eliminate everything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable? Who is made stronger or wiser when views that are “wrong” or “bad” are not given airtime in which they can be confronted, dissected, understood, and either accepted or rejected? How do you know your own cherished view is so stellar if it is never challenged? 

Further, what is distasteful today is palatable tomorrow and vice versa. If we make offense the basis of our definition of what can be said and what can’t be said, then we have no foundation at all. You may be the darling today, but you may well be incarcerated tomorrow. Once the definition about what constitutes “clear and present danger” is reformulated and enshrined in law, it can be applied to anyone’s speech about anything because it depends on what makes people feel uncomfortable and not on what leads to risk. 

A better approach to speech we find repugnant is more speech. We should have more discussion, more debate, more exposure. Without free speech the marketplace of ideas is a boring monopoly of bland, usually ungodly, sameness.