A DISTURBING TREND [Excerpts]

Over the past decade, many Western democratic nations such as Germany,
Sweden, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Britain, Canada and Australia have  passed
laws criminalizing religious speech that is based on the Bible.
Specifically, these laws target speech that could be deemed an aggression
against the dignity of its citizens, particularly those who engage in
homosexual behavior.

Repression of religious speech is nothing new in countries such as China and
Iran. Many people around the globe live under the persistent threat of
criminal penalties for espousing and  sharing religious views inconsistent
with those of that particular nation's official religion. But the recent
development in those Western democracies is nevertheless unsettling
considering that a minister who preaches directly from the Bible on the
issue of homosexuality is likely to be prosecuted.

A second trend, however, makes this foreign hostility to religious speech
significant within our borders. Over the  past decade, the U.S. Supreme
Court has turned with increasing frequency  to foreign law when ruling on
hot-button issues such as capital  punishment, racial discrimination and gay
rights.

Even more troubling, [October, 2005], the  U.S. House of Representatives
approved the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 2662).
This bill would extend hate crimes law, which currently covers
classifications of race, religion and national origin, to now include sexual
orientation. This would pave the way for banning speech directed at a
lifestyle that millions of Americans believe is contrary to the Bible. Such
legislation would actually obviate the need for the Supreme Court to draw
upon foreign law to take this leap.

What does this mean for the American clergy and  Christians? The net effect
would be that a minister preaching against  homosexuality as a sin would do
so under the threat of criminal  prosecution. Simply pointing out that a
certain lifestyle is against the  Bible's teachings, without the suggestion
of animus or violence against those who practice it (which would certainly
go against the teachings of the Bible), could subject the speaker to
possible  incarceration.

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court recognized that it is  not "in the
competence of courts under our constitutional scheme to  approve,
disapprove, classify, regulate or in any manner control sermons  delivered
at religious meetings. . . . To call the words which one minister  speaks to
his congregation a sermon, immune from regulation, and the words  of another
minister an address, subject to regulation, is merely an  indirect way of
preferring one religion over another."

If the Supreme Court holds true to its precedents, America will weather the
incoming storm of political correctness and preserve our most cherished
rights, that of free speech and free exercise of religion, without the
threat of criminal retribution. Should the court continue down this  foreign
law slope, however, there is no telling the impact upon religious  speech in
America.

 (Marc C. Anderson is an attorney in Fort  Myers, "Fort Meyers News-Press," 11/7/05).