4 - Litigating for the Lord

Summary

A quiet Sunday in the sleepy Swedish town of Borgholm; a few dozen worshippers filing into the local Pentecostal church; at the pulpit, sixty-two-year-old Åke Green, bald, bespectacled, avuncular: then the unassuming minister began spouting fire and brimstone. “Is homosexuality genetic or an evil force that plays mind games with people?” Invoking scripture and science, he found an answer. “Humans are slipping into clearly unbiblical and clearly inhuman relations. It is not a private matter or a right to live in a sexual manner other than what the Bible dictates.…[It is] a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society.” Its effects: everything from bestiality to pedophilia. Yet Sweden did nothing to excise the malignancy! On the contrary: politicians and press promoted homosexuality, even public displays of gay love. And, gallingly, the government ignored Christians who “cannot bear to see such things,” thereby risking “violence.” This time, however, prosecutors caught Green's words. Days after his July 2003 tirade, they indicted him for violating a new law criminalizing “disrespect” for groups defined by sexual orientation. Later he was convicted and sentenced to thirty days in jail.

But Green never served time. To his rescue flew an unlikely angel: out of Fairfax, Virginia, a powerful Christian lawyers’ group, Advocates International. Dispatching top attorneys, it and other overseas NGOs prepped Green's local counsel, submitted amicus curiae briefs in Swedish courts, and mustered religious groups in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Under this legal and political barrage, an appellate court overturned Green's conviction in February 2005.