Repression is repression is repression

Thanks to Carlos for pointing out this story: Swedish pastor sentenced to one month's jail for offending homosexuals. The pastor's "crime"?

During a sermon in 2003, Green described homosexuality as "abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumour in the body of society".

Pretty strong words, true. But throwing someone in jail simply for saying strong words is censorship, pure and simple. It's political repression of the most naked sort.

Soren Andersson, the president of the Swedish federation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights (RFSL), said on hearing the sentence that religious freedom could never be used as a reason to offend people. "Therefore," he told journalists, "I cannot regard the sentence as an act of interference with freedom of religion."

Now, as Carlos said, this is simply too ridiculous to even require fisking; however, I will permit myself the following statement: When a group that has been suppressed in the past turns around and suppresses others once it gains political power, it isn't enacting "justice". It's adopting the worst characteristics of the former oppressors. To do so is to live according to the cynical, Machiavellian principle that power is all, that there are no such things as rights and that whoever has power at any given moment can, and should, mercilessly suppress all who would oppose them.