While Russia is protecting the family by enshrining traditional heterosexual marriage in its constitution, other nations — such as Switzerland — are making it against the law even to express traditional views in public.
Swiss citizens who believe that homosexual acts are wrong will be prevented from expressing their views.
It’s another sign of an increasingly oppressive world and diminishing freedom. On February 9, Swiss citizens voted by a large majority – over 63% – in favor of the bill that will punish “homophobic discrimination”.
Now, this language is perfidious. Only homosexual Swiss citizens, or those who agree with them, will have full freedom to do and say what they want; whereas Swiss citizens who believe homosexual behavior is wrong will not have the opportunity to say it. This is an obvious abuse, but one that the world we live in seems to like more and more: it is a world less and less free, and in fact more and more discriminatory.
Those who now bask in victory say that the Swiss vote is a barrier erected against hatred. In fact, the opposite is true. Complacency is the proverbial characteristic of bullies, and the Swiss case is no exception. Saying that homosexual relationships are wrong, even a sin, is still no incitement to hatred (as it distinguishes between acts and persons); whereas reviling those who have a different opinion with frightening words like “homophobia” could very really be seen as an incitement to hatred.
Why is it not hatred to accuse those who think differently of obscurantism, backwardness, fanaticism, maybe even fascism? Why today does the defense of the freedom of belief and expression include only some people’s beliefs?
Freedom is all or nothing. Why does the LGBT+ community, which labels as “homophobic” those who think differently just because they think differently, want to impose on all the world this despotism of curtailed freedom? Why is it considered so threatening that someone may be free to say that homosexuality is wrong? Is this not just a fear of freedom?
I do not fear at all the freedom of a homosexual person to do or say as he or she likes. Instead, I fear the anti-freedom of those who want to impose an idea on me and my family, those who want to restrict and compress our liberty and impose a single way of thinking. I fear this dogma and “religion”: the dogma of uniformity and the religion of conformity.
It’s just a hunch, but I have the feeling that most of the Swiss who voted “yes” in the referendum did so in the belief that they were seriously preventing discrimination against homosexual people; but in reality they are only restricting the freedom of disagreement, as all who shy away from confrontation want to do.