The two-step to utopia

A chapter from the evolution of totalitarian Europe:

1. Poland—Catholic Poland—joins the EU.

2. The EU has rules against the “incitement of discrimination and hatred based on sexual orientation.”

3. Polish government ministers declare their intention of firing teachers who promote “homosexual culture” in the schools.

4. The EU Parliament orders the EU’s anti-racism center to investigate “the emerging climate of racist, xenophobic and homophobic intolerance in Poland.”

5. The Polish prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, replies: “Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland. However, if we’re talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools, I fully agree with those who feel this way. Such propaganda should not be in schools; it definitely doesn’t serve youth well. It’s not in the interest of any society to increase the number of homosexuals—that’s obvious.”

See where this is going? Poland belongs to a transnational body that exercises real authority over member states. This body, the European Union, forbids discrimination against homosexuals. The Polish leaders think that their government in accord with the EU law that prohibits discrimination against homosexuals, even as they seek to ban the promotion of homosexuality in Polish schools. The Poles evidently interpret anti-homosexual discrimination as outright persecution of homosexuals and incitement of hatred and violence against homosexuals. But the EU evidently interprets anti-homosexual discrimination as any statement or policy that suggests that homosexuality is in any way less good for human beings than heterosexuality. Where the EU thinking ultimately ends up, of course, is a law like the Sexual Orientation Regulations in Britain, which make it unlawful even for a Catholic adoption agency to decline to adopt children to homoosexual couples. I don’t think the Poles realize yet what they have gotten into. They have voluntarily subjected their country to an egalitarian juggernaut that will not stop until it has eliminated every conceivable type of anti-minority discrimination from every square inch—excuse me, every square centimeter—of the cosmos.

- end of initial entry -

N. writes:

Clayton Cramer has suggested a few times that it may be impossible to have both free speech and the kind of gay rights that are now being promoted. Looking at the “two step to utopia” article, reflecting on the English Sexual Orientation Regs and recalling the recent police raid on a schoolboy there who misused the word “gay” in an email, I am seriously beginning to wonder if he is correct.

Because free speech means that a man at the pulpit of a socially and theologically conservative church, especially a Reformed one, can say “God hates sin. He hates fornication, he hates adultury, he hates unchastity, he hates the homosexual act” without fear of being arrested. Gay rights means, ultimately, that it is “hate speech” even to read out loud parts of Leviticus and the Pauline letters. There’s no way for a prohibition on “hate speech” and free speech to coexist.

There’s also no way for religious freedom and gay rights of the sort promoted in Britain to coexist either, as the Poles are about to find out.

Jonathan L. writes:

Liberals often praise medieval Islam by noting it was “tolerant” of Jews and Christians, as if any empire, from the Assyrian to the British, from the most benign to the most malevolent, must not by definition be at least somewhat accommodating of distinct ethnic and national groups (else it would cease to be an empire, and become a nation instead). The European Union is now a self-styled empire of tolerance, and I can easily imagine a time when it will use force to batter down the walls of “racism” and exclusion.

LA replies:

Which raises the even more disturbing question that Conservative Swede introduced and I discussed: Will it be America’s role to be the enforcer of this totalitarian European order?

Gintas J. writes:

Why would anyone join the EU? For the economic benefits, pure and simple. It’s a deal with the devil, for sure.

I was in Switzerland earlier this year. They are not part of the EU, one main reason is that Swiss banking is a big business for them, and remaining independent of EU rules is important for the Swiss banking advantage. Funny how the economic argument works there.

LA replies:

Are there any respected figures or organizations in Europe today that say that the EU is a bad thing and oppose it as such? I’m not aware of any.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 26, 2007 06:10 PM | Send