A pentacostal pastor in Sweden, Ake Green, was sentenced to a month in prison for the supposed crime of preaching against the sin of homosexuality. In a 2003 sermon, Green described the vice as “abormal-a horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society” and its practioners as “perverse…whose sexual drives the Devil has used as his strongest weapon against God.”

Public prosecutor Kjell Yugvesson played a tape recording of the sermon during Green’s trial. “One may have whatever religion one wishes, but [Green’s sermon] is an attack on all fronts against homosexuals,” insisted Yugvesson. “Collecting Bible [verses] on this topic as he does makes this hate speech.”

That’s right. The prosecutor specified that the sermons constituted “hate speech” because they drew on the Bible.

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic of the Rockford Institute points out that this outrage in Sweden typifies the “anti-Christian beliefs and assumptions of the European Union” and may presage a broader campaign throughout the EU to sanction, censor and ultimately suppress outright any public expression of Christian values. The only European statesman of stature to denounce the treatment of Pastor Green was Slovakia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Palko, a member of that nation’s conservative Christian Democratic Movement (KDH).

“In Europe, people are starting to be put behind bars for saying what they think,” warned Palko, citing the Green case as an illustration of why the KDH opposed a recently adopted anti-discrimination law in Slovskia. But in the increasingly centralized European Union, once independent nations who refuse to enact pro homosexuality measures may have them stuffed down their throats in the name of “harmonizing” their laws with the new (not yet ratified) EU Constitution.