Court drops hate crime charge against Swiss bishop for speaking about homosexuality
The Swiss Bishop of Chur, Bishop Vitus Huonder, was sued by a
homosexual organization, Pink Cross, and charged with a hate crime because, in
a public talk in Fulda, Germany, on 31 July, he had the Old Testament
concerning practicing homosexuals.
On October 9,
however, the official website of the Swiss Bishops' Conference, kath.ch, reported that the responsible
State Court in Graubünden, Switzerland, has dropped this suit due to a lack of
sufficient grounds for the charge.
As the
representative of Bishop Huonder, Guiseppe Gracia, told LifeSiteNews: “The
lawsuit was an attempt to penalize the freedoms of religion and of speech for
those who are of a different opinion.” However, according to Gracia, this
attempt did not have any success. This was especially “good news for all those
who take seriously the claim to practice mutual tolerance.”
The Swiss
Bishops' website also reports that, in addition to the male homosexual
association, Pink Cross, a female homosexual umbrella organization also
originally filed suit against Bishop Huonder. All of these legal actions were
taken in spite of the fact that Bishop Huonder promptly and publicly
apologized for his lack of prudence.
The bishop said he should not have quoted Old Testament passages which speak of
a death penalty for practicing homosexuals without also making it perfectly
clear that he only meant with these illustrative quotes to show how the Old
Testament sternly regarded the practice of homosexuality itself. The bishop
said he did not think it was necesarry to emphasize that he was not propagating
the idea of a death penalty for those who now practice homosexuality.
Bishop
Huonder had already on August 3 made it unequivocally
clear that he adheres to the traditional Catholic
moral teaching on homosexuality, as expressed in the official Catechism of the
Catholic Church, which explicitly prohibits unjust discrimination againts
homosexual persons.
Guiseppe
Gracia explained the background to this law suit to LifeSiteNews, as follows:
It was
obvious that the Bishop [Huonder] had not had the intention to call anybody to
violence and that he himself had apologized several times for this
misunderstanding. Nevertheless, the Gay Lobby filed suit. That perhaps happened
also in order to propagandize in favor of an amendment of a law which will soon
be on the agenda in Switzerland, namely the broadening of the so-called Penal
Law Against Racism by adding the criterion of the sexual orientation.
The political goal is clear: in the future, any
critical statements about the homosexual way of life – whether they are based
on religious arguments or others – shall be able to be prosecuted by the courts
as [a form of] racism. In this way, one aims at silencing everybody who is of a
different opinion – under the false flag of anti-discrimination.
Pink Cross
has decided to file an
appeal against the decision of
the Public Prosecution Department in Graubuenden, Switzerland to drop the law
suit against Huonder. Huonder's spokesman declined any further comment toward
the media about this new move which will put Huonder under further and
prolonged tension and pressure. Pink Cross upholds the claim that he was
calling for violence against homosexuals.
