FREE SPEECH MUST FOLLOW VOLTAIRE

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:- While lovers of liberty in all lands have urged the necessity of freedom of speech none put the case more pointedly than Voltaire when he wrote, “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.”  Perhaps that sentence exemplifies the difference between those of a libertarian bent from all others whether of the Left or the Right.  In 2009 The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders was allowed entry to the UK after appealing successfully a ban imposed some months previously by the Home Office. His visit passed without incident.  Currently there is growing opposition to a proposed visit by Franklin Graham an American evangelist preacher on the grounds that he is likely to provoke a possible reaction from Muslims, gay people and others whom Graham has castigated in speeches in the USA.  The rise of a British Muslim population of 3 million has simultaneously led to increasing criticism of conservative Christianity and its adherents` proselytising. Cases of people wearing a cross around their necks have hit the headlines when their companies have ordered them to remove such items. For generations the Plymouth Brethren in England and the "Wee Frees" in Scotland have quietly lived their lives within their own strict rules and communities.  They too hold views not dissimilar from the aforesaid American and Dutchman. In short outside Northern Ireland religion was a private topic in this country until the immigration of hundreds of thousands of people from lands where religion was not only public but carried with it political inferences long dismissed here.  

The latest manifestation of perhaps anti Christian bias within the justice system was demonstrated by Lincoln Magistrates on 14 September when a Christian preacher was convicted of using threatening and discriminatory language whilst preaching in that city. That verdict was overturned on appeal at the crown court.  

I have posted three times in the last year or so on the topic of hate crime: 9th August 2016, 3rd April 2017 and most recently 22nd August this year.  It truly requires senior judiciary to halt this apparent upping of the ante as to what constitutes "hate".  Provided no incentive to violent action can be construed from actual words used, those opposed to the views and opinions of people like Geert Wilders, Franklin Graham and others whether of the Right or the Left, Christian or Muslim, gay or trans or whatever should make their arguments orally, in writing or through social media. Banning those who voice what some consider unsayable is a short slope to the unthinkable.