Posted on 06/25/2007 12:39:01 PM PDT by ZGuy
Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for “Volksverhetzung” (incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust. Next week, the Council of Europe is going to vote on a resolution imposing Darwinism as Europe’s official ideology. The European governments are asked to fight the expression of creationist opinions, such as young earth and intelligent design theories. According to the Council of Europe these theories are “undemocratic” and “a threat to human rights.”
Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase annually by at least 150,000 – which is the number of legal abortions in birth dearth Germany. Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn to the killing of the Jews in Auschwitz during the Second World War. On 14 June, a court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had “incited the people” because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany. Hence, Herr Lerle was sentenced to one year in jail. Earlier, he had already spent eight months in jail for calling abortionists “professional killers” – an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because, according to the court, the unborn are not humans.
Other German courts convicted pro-lifers for saying that “in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed,” because this terminology evoked Hitler’s euthanasia program, which used the same language. In 2005, a German pro-lifer, Günter Annen, was sentenced to 50 days in jail for saying “Stop unjust [rechtswidrige] abortions in [medical] practice,” because, according to the court, the expression “unjust” is understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not.
Volksverhetzung is a crime which the Nazis often invoked against their enemies and which contemporary Germany also uses to intimidate homeschoolers. Soon, the German authorities will be able to use the same charge against people who question Darwin’s evolution theory.
Indeed, next Tuesday, the Council of Europe (CoE), Europe’s main human-rights body, will vote on a proposal which advocates the fight against creationism, “young earth” and “intelligent design” in its 47 member states.
According to a report of the CoE’s Parliamentary Assembly, creationists are dangerous “religious fundamentalists” who propagate “forms of religious extremism” and “could become a threat to human rights.” The report adds that the acceptance of the science of evolutionism “is crucial to the future of our societies and our democracies.”
“Creationism, born of the denial of the evolution of species through natural selection, was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon,” the report says.
“Today creationist theories are tending to find their way into Europe and their spread is affecting quite a few Council of Europe member states. […] [T]his is liable to encourage the development of all manner of fundamentalism and extremism, synonymous with attacks of utmost virulence on human rights. The total rejection of science is definitely one of the most serious threats to human rights and civic rights. […] The war on the theory of evolution and on its proponents most often originates in forms of religious extremism which are closely allied to extreme right-wing political movements. The creationist movements possess real political power. The fact of the matter, and this has been exposed on several occasions, is that the advocates of strict creationism are out to replace democracy by theocracy. [...] If we are not careful, the values that are the very essence of the Council of Europe will be under direct threat from creationist fundamentalists.”
According to the CoE report, America and Australia are already on their way towards becoming such undemocratic theocracies where human and civic rights are endangered. Creationism is “well-developed in the English-speaking countries, especially the United States and Australia,” the report states.
“While most curricula in Europe today unashamedly teach evolution as a recognised scientific theory, the same does not apply to the United States. In July 2005, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll that showed that 64% of Americans favoured the teaching of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution and that 38% would support the total abandonment of the teaching of evolution in publicly owned schools. The American President George W. Bush supports the principle of teaching both intelligent design and the theory of evolution. At the moment, 20 of the 50 American states are facing potential adjustments of their school curricula in favour of intelligent design. Many people think that this phenomenon only affects the United States and that, even if it is not possible to be indifferent to what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, it is not the Council of Europe’s role to deal with this issue. That, however, is not the case. On the contrary, it would seem crucial for us to take the appropriate precautions in our 47 member states.”
Though one may disagree with people who take the Book of Genesis literally (believing that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh), surely secularist political organizations telling people what they may or may not believe, constitute a far greater threat to human rights than religious institutions telling their faithful how to vote. In the voting booth people are free to do what they like, whilst in contemporary Europe people are no longer free to publicly voice their own, deeply felt opinions in public.
In Germany, believing abortion to be as murderous as the holocaust is a crime, and educating your own children is a crime too. In France, saying that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” is a crime, and so is the distribution of pork soup to the poor. In Belgium, speaking out against immigration is a crime.
In the latest issue of the Dutch conservative magazine Bitter Lemon the Dutch author Erik van Goor writes that European courts are silencing conservative and orthodox citizens. Freedom of speech no longer exist, says van Goor.
“While many in the West still idolize the second-hand fighters for free speech, such as [Ayaan] Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh, the true victims of curtailment are deliberately kept under wraps. Hirsi Ali, [Pim] Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were not curtailed by the state or by court, Johannes Lerle is. The former voiced mere opinions – expressions of a public opinion which one may or may not value or believe. The latter – Dr Lerle – shows that what is at stake is not merely opinions, but a moral order which is being questioned; a reality of life and death which is at risk.”
Hirsi Ali, Fortuyn and van Gogh did not defend Europe’s traditional Christian moral order. People such as Johannes Lerle and Christian Vanneste, the French parliamentarian who was convicted for “homophobia,” do. The latter are being persecuted by Western Europe’s political regimes – a phenomenon which is ignored completely by the Western mainstream media, who participate in the persecution.
What a lie! He didn't deny the Holocaust...he used it in comparison (which is the opposite of what they accused him of) to what they are currently doing to babies now.
How long will it be before the "progressives" in the US start putting Christians in prison here for opposing the murder of babies?
In short, he is compromised and therefore not worthy of his martyr status.
You amaze me! I didn't even have to post all of his anti-Semitic slander. However, that material can be found translated here.
Lerle writes:
If Christ, in his later youth, of Nathanael said “see, a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile”, then that meant the Israelite was usually wrong, so that Nathanael stood out from his compatriots, like a white raven.. . .
The murderous deeds in no way stopped with Jesus’s death. So the “Jews” stoned Stephen, because they felt hurt when he, based on the Old Testament, proved Jesus was the promised Messiah. So they stand in the tradition of the murderers of prophets, because they now had become murderers of the Messiah long promised by the prophets. (Acts 6:9 – 7:56). According to Jesus’s prediction (Matt. 10:17), the persecution of the first Christians proceeded mostly from the synagogue (many verses). The first Christians were considered to be Jewish sects. The fact that the Romans could differentiate between “Jews” and Christians, so that only the Christians were thrown to the wild beasts in the circus, while the “Jews” were given religious liberty, shows who was behind the persecution.
(Emphasis mine.)
He's said that the Holocaust wasn't so bad, Auschwitz was not a site of mass-murder, the gas chambers didn't exist, and 6 million Jews were not murdered. He's said that Jewish propaganda spread lies about Hitler and the Germans and made up many of these atrocities.
Ehh??? Minutia?? He's saying "6 million dead? There's no proof of that! It isn't so!"
You said, "I don't care if he is a Holocaust denier." I calls 'em as I sees 'em.
I must have missed this part. What I saw him doing was comparing the murder of millions of babies to the murder of millions of Jews. That seems a fair comparison.
It's an important part. That's why he's on trial, not because he opposes abortion.
I would agree...and if so, then the article’s title is quite misleading (I did read past the title).
Because you're too willfully blind to look up Coyoteman's links. Ever heard of Google?
Europe really is different from America. Radically different. Attempts to europize America will always fail.
To paraphrase a glitchy translation of one instance, he says of a decision allowing abortionists to practice in Bavaria that "a legal decision giving a person a fundamental right to illegally kill other people would hardly have been seen in Nazi times", however, he was not put on trial for this statement.
From the rather garbled translation I'm looking at, it looks as if the newspaper thinks that because the judges say abortion is a "putative wrong" (in a different case, I believe the one where a pro-life person was given 50 days for saying abortion was unjust, which they considered to mean illegal and I suppose amount to libel), they should not enforce the laws against Holocaust denial against him when he says allegations of genocide at Auschwitz are "putative wrong".
It appears sources outside Germany have taken the pro-life aspect of the case and left the Holocaust-denyial and anti-Semitism parts out. This is probably due to the language barrier and due to news outlets' (even faith-based ones') preference for sensationalism!
This translation is the most clear I have seen so far, but it is still quite hard to read.
I notice one person's comment on the story that sums up my conclusions:
If the Holocaust was an awful event(incident) for you, you would unambiguously dissociate yourselves from that side. This counts(applies) in particular to these "Katrin" among other things(and others) which exert themselves here for this Lerle whose body of thought one can admire on his(its) Internet page: Revisionism, anti-semitic propaganda, etc., however, he is called "Christian" and is Abtreibungsgegener, this justifies of course everything.
It's a basic aspect of human nature that we tend to attribute good motives to people who belong to our group--in this case, many pro-life Christians attribute good motives to Lerle because he is a Christian and is pro-life. Unfortunately he uses his religion to excuse anti-Semitism that most American Christians would find abhorrent.
Ahayes, you clearly have a double standard. Your vision seems to be 20/20 when it comes to Pastor Lerle’s holocaust revisionism, but you go blind when it comes to the mountains of evidence demonstrating that the German socialists are using his questioning of certain aspects of the holocaust (holocaust revisionism) to go after him for his pro-life activities. The difference between you and I is I am morally equipped to evaluate the entire body of evidence, whereas your morality (or lack thereof) prohibits you from dispassionately discussing that part of the evidence that goes against your Darwinist/(pro-abortion?) agenda.
The record is clear, each and every time Pastor Lerle has been hauled into court and/or put in jail, it was for calling German abortionists “professional killers” or comparing their record of extermination to the Nazi holocaust. Pastor Lerle has made it clear that he considers Nazi genocide to be a matter of public record (although he does hold the repugnant view that the Jews shouldn’t hold any special status relative to other victims of Nazi extermination). Having said that, and as I have pointed out over and over, it makes no sense for Pastor Lerle to compare the German abortion mill to the holocaust unless he considers what the Nazi’s did to be genocide.
So let me sum up. Pastor Lerle entertains disturbing ideas about what really happened during the holocaust. Pastor Lerle is pro-life, and frequently demonstrates in front of abortion clinics in which he compares the German abortion doctors to professional killers and Nazis. The German socialists in power have a history of arresting Pastor Lerle for his anti-abortion activities. Pastor Lerle’s controversial views re: the holocaust make him an easy target. The German socialists have paradoxically used Pastor Lerle’s comparison of state approved abortion and the state approved holocaust to accuse and now convict him of “holocaust denial”. If you look at these facts objectively, it is clear that the German socialists are using all of this as an excuse to silence Pastor Lerle’s campaign to end abortion in Germany.
Again (and again, and again!), here’s something on Pastor Lerle from 2002. Notice the German socialists were going after him and his compatriots for their anti-abortion activities (comparing abortion doctors to genocidal Nazis, professional killers, murderers, etc)...NOT holocaust denial:
Truth can be dangerous, another German, the theologian Dr. Johannes Lerle learned when he referred to an abortionist as a “professional killer” and was given a jail sentence for slander. For producing a leaflet with the words: “In North Clinic, life unworthy of living is being killed,” a German family was forbidden to use that terminology, because it evoked Hitler’s euthanasia program, which used the same language. A third man, Günter Annen, was forbidden to say, “Stop unjust [rechtswidrige] abortions in [medical] practice,” because the expression “unjust” was understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not. Dr. Lerle, a theologian, was sentenced once again, this time to seven and one half months of prison2 for saying that termination of pregnancy is what it really is, the brutal, painful murder of innocent human beings in the early stage of their wonderful development, arranged by the Creator (Psalm 139). These arrests and injunctions appear to violate Article 2 of the German Constitution, where we read, “Everyone has the right to life and bodily integrity.” As a consequence, although Dr. Lerle is still in prison, the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that protesters may indeed carry signs reading “Child murder in North Clinic,” and even “Holocaust yesterday, Babycaust today.”
See post #136
Really, you're so sweet!
Hug that cuddly Nazi!
Sorry, ahayes, unlike you, I do not want to put my arms around Nazis. I defend free speech, even free speech emanating from my opponents. You, on the other hand, are cheerfully willing to use the power of the state to silence your opponents. It is obvious that you long ago realized that the jackboot fits, and have decided to wear it.
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