A leading religious freedom campaigning organisation has warned that a Council of Europe resolution promoting homosexual rights poses a serious risk to religious freedom.
The Alliance Defence Fund (ADF), a US group which has been involved in dozens of religious freedom cases, has produced an analysis of the Draft Resolution on Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, which is being considered the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), violates “the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.
The resolution, which is based on the Yogyakarta Principles, seeks, inter alia, to absolutise the right of homosexuals to freedom of speech, while denying the right to free speech to those who oppose the homosexual agenda.
The Principles propose legalising same-sex marriage and adoption world-wide, banning ‘hate speech’ against homosexuals, and would effectively compel religious schools to employ openly homosexual staff, and teach a pro-homosexual message to pupils.
For example, the resolution calls on Member states “to take appropriate measures to combat all forms of expression, including in the media and on the Internet, which may be reasonably understood as likely to produce the effect of inciting, spreading or promoting hatred or other forms of discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons”.
The resolution also implicitly calls for Member States to “take appropriate measures at national, regional and local levels, to ensure that the right to freedom of peaceful assembly can be effectively enjoyed, without discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity”. This would protect “Gay Pride” parades.
In a briefing document, the ADF point out a number of serious problems with the resolution. The resolution, the document says, seeks to “cripple the right to freedom of speech, opinion, and expression” of those who have a moral objection to homosexual behaviour.
The Draft Resolution, the ADF analysis continues, “also specifically targets religious viewpoints that are contrary to the “LGBT” agenda. They also refer to the “very dangerous precedent” set by the Pastor Ake Green case, in which a Swedish pastor was sentenced to prison for preaching a Biblically based sermon on homosexual behavior.
The ADF analysis continues: “In essence the Council of Europe is here calling for states to restrict rights of belief and conscience and the right to share those beliefs with others. This is indeed a slippery slope which is strongly contradicted by international and European law”.
They also point out that the resolution’s definition of sexual orientation “is completely subjective, ignoring the basic objective biological reality that people are born a certain sex”.
The analysis also points out that Articles 8 and 14 of the ECHR, referred to in the draft resolution, do not refer to sexual orientation, and therefore cannot be relied upon as a legal basis for the resolution.
They conclude that “the proposals set forth in the Draft Resolutions violate the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.