We have a new assault on free speech in Europe. Tonje Gjevjon, a lesbian filmmaker and actress, is now facing up to three years in prison. Her crime? Saying on Facebook that a man cannot become a lesbian.
Gjevjon was put under investigation for making the comments about Norwegian activist Christine Jentoft, a transgender female that often refers to herself as a lesbian mother. On Facebook Gjevjon wrote “It’s just as impossible for men to become a lesbian as it is for men to become pregnant. Men are men regardless of their sexual fetishes.”
This is obviously protected speech in the United States. However, in many countries, it is not a criminal offense to express an opposing view on gender identity.
Jeftoft has previously brought criminal charges against those who questioned his sexual identification.
Free speech in Norway and much of Europe is in a free fall. In 2020, the country amended its penal code that added “gender identity and gender expression” as protected categories from hate speech.
Those expressing contrary views can face up to three years in jail. Not only does the law criminalize public comments, but you can receive a year in jail even for comments made in private.
The impact of these laws was evident in a recent poll of German citizens. Only 18% of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. 59% of Germans did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. And just 17% felt free to express themselves on the Internet.
We have been discussing the ongoing controversies — and prosecutions — over what are called Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs). The term is used for feminists who have voiced opposition to transgender policies and laws that they believe “erase” or “marginalize” biological women. The most famous such figure is author J.K. Rowling who has not only been the subject of a global cancel campaign but was recently listed by Buzzfeed with figures like cult leader Jim Jones, Benedict Arnold and O.J. Simpson as “villains.”
In 2019, we discussed the prosecution of Finnish Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen. She was critical of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for its support of the Helsinki LGBT Pride events in June. She spoke out against the involvement while highlighting a quote from Romans 1:24-27 which reads:
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
In March, both were acquitted of all charges in their cases.
Norway is a vivid example of how this movement to criminalize speech is continuing. The left has embraced censorship and criminalization to silence those with opposing views, even views based on religious values. It is a movement that continues to gain support in the United States. However, citizens need only to look to Europe to see what awaits us if we continue on this course.
It is no accident that, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, figures like Hillary Clinton turned to Europe to censor the views of fellow Americans. The anti-free speech movement has taken hold of the European Union.
The Gjevjon case is only the latest skirmish in this existential struggle for free speech in the West.
Diagnosable Mental Disorders. Social Contagions. Trans people please, get the help and therapy you need to manage your disease. Stop forcing your pronouns and sexuality on everyone, especially children. Pedophiles and their supporters/enablers are inhuman, and subject to extermination. For the greater good, of course.
The world is in the grip of mass formation psychosis about gender politics, Covid vaccines, the Ukraine war and racial extremism. 70+ years ago it was the opposite in/out group. People saw communism everywhere and those people were ostracized. Fast forward to 2040 and we’ll be cringing about the loons of today. There will be thousands of people who have detransitioned and ended up suing their parents, teachers and hospitals who mutilated their genitalia in the name of experimentation.
I don’t have a woke dictionary. A “man” cant be a lesbian. Because lesbian is a woman sexually attracted to a woman.
Even with a woke dictionary, this is a true statement, yes?
And to further clarify the terminology – what is a woman? A woman is a grown female. So a lesbian is a grown female attracted to another grown female. Ergo, a man cannot be a lesbian. It is pretty simple really.
I can’t help thinking that the Norwegian law is prompted not so much by leftist ideology as by the feminization of thinking, and its concomitant desire to protect even the most outrageous people from anything that might make them cry.
Norway is not the United States of America.
Best not to comment about that which you know nothing, Jonathan Turley.
And the very same thing they are doing you do. I’m sure you farm it out but if you don’t color inside the lines here at Jonathanturley’s corner, it just gets deleted.
America has surgically removed its spine and replaced it with a euphemism.
Professor Turley is discussing free speech in different countries. I would bet he knows just a little more about this subject than you do,,,
And my friend Sirius life mattered…but a Russian on the op in Afghanistan got her NATO dead. So stfu.
Benson:
“Norway is not the United States of America.
Best not to comment about that which you know nothing, Jonathan Turley.”
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You have a PhD in Engg. Science and Math from CalTech. How should we then judge your take on anything else? Oh. oh, oh … I know. You’re not a lawyer or constitutional scholar, Benson. “Best not to comment …” – you know the rest.
Why be like that…my Friend siri…died for egalitarian……have her life that for Christ sake…in his eyes… we are just humanly equal. Pity her Norwegian….self reliance. Now some one has to expose it. She never would. Died to Saint good. For the right reasons. Rip siri. For our kids.
mespo7* —- My father’s parents emigrated from Norway just after the turn of the previous century. I’ve visited Norway.
My grandparents immigrated from Milan and I rode through it on a train once. I don’t know anything about that place either.
mespo7*, I have visited Milan several times for several days each time. Usually I stayed in a hostel across the plaza from the gas station where the body of Mussolini hung in 1944, but I never went across the plaza, just once a quarter-way around to a bank. Banks in Milan were something else, complete with armed guards and thick glass entry portals.
With doors at each end operated by the guards. I always wore a tie in Italy.
He knows far more than you.
Best not to comment about that which you know nothing, Jonathan Turley.”
“physician, heal thyself”
Stupidity should always be called out, especially among western nations.
These are battles, not skirmishes. It smacks of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and 1930s Germany and Italy. How soon before they go after those who comment in forums, demanding the emails of the anonymous posters.
“…you can receive a year in jail even for comments made in private.”
Who would have thought? What is this world coming to?
1984- Orwells prophetic novel?
Ray Epps–Sam Brinton for Democrat Presidential Ticket and Michael Avenatti for Democrat Attorney General in 2024!!! We need them now more than ever.
The control of speech is the goal of the American left and its representative, the Democratic party. It is required to make us a one party country. The number of Americans who have not been educated about the purpose and logic of our 1st Amendment, and can therefore be mislead, is frightening and devastating to me. It is like a dagger through my heart.
Control of speech is the edict, the rule of the communist party. There are no countries, there is no America; there is nothing American. There is only communism, which, by definition, is global. American youth have been educated in communism, understanding its enslavement. Your heart and the hearts of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, Jay, Mason, Hancock, Lee, Paine, Livingston, Marshall, Dickinson, Monroe, Rush et al. have daggers through them that were put there by the likes of Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Obama and the rest of the communists in America.
Impossible to have a healthy democracy with the idiots who represent the average American.
Why do the average people vote for them?
Great Question. Ignorance? Brainwashed? So distracted they have no time to consider the consequences of their vote? I wish I knew why people vote to turn their own country into a prison but they do.
The democratic/dictatorial duality is, in fact, enabled by this cohort.
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”
– Gordon A. Eadie, 1945
____________________
You fell for the abomination and corruption of the language in the Year of Our Lord, 2022.
You fell for the corruption of the Constitution by “Crazy Abe” Lincoln in 1860.
You fell for the corruption of population integrity in 1863.
You fell for the corruption of the Bill of Rights in 1865.
You fell for the corruption of freedom, free enterprise and constitutional ideology during Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Obama.
You have fallen for anything; you have fallen for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
You should have advocated in freedom for constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities.
You should have supported the dominion of constitutional freedom, including its outcomes.
America was doomed when we let the jews the Jesuits in. The photo of FDR Stalin and the Brit tells it all and now you see it.
Unfortunately, they also let stupid people in as well (see above comment).
Jews and Jesuits have contributed to the betterment of society in ways that KKKers and other misguided, ignorant, and uneducated people cannot begin to understand. All to their own detriment as they and their children’s children are and will be the ultimate losers and sufferers.
I am an european (Dutch) atheist, but I fully agree with your comment!
Thank you for your advocacy, Dr Turley!
“She spoke out against the involvement while highlighting a quote from Romans 1:24-27 which reads:
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
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I love Romans. I can see Paul throwing down the thunder with great aplumb and, arms aloft, railing against the sins of the pagans. His creshendo line remains and echoes thorugh the ages: “Professing themselves [to be] wise, they became fools.” [my edit always ditches the “to be” ’cause it sounds so much better without it].
The KJV is the ultimate jewel of the English langauage. (The Bard takes a close second and I am partial to Percy Blythe Shelley but it’s an easy call). Thanks, Your Grace Richard Bancroft!
“Professing themselves [to be] wise, they became fools.”
It was ever thus.
Cherry picking is so slothful:
Proverbs 23:20-21
Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.
Proverbs 23:20
Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat,
Philippians 3:19
Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Proverbs 23:2
And put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite.
here is the money shot:
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
“To be” is in the Greek text. What you are doing is rewriting Scripture to suit yourself.
dammad:
“To be” is in the Greek text. What you are doing is rewriting Scripture to suit yourself.”
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What I’m doing is improving the English. It’s my comment so as the author that’s my prerogative.
A lot of this is at the instigation of China. China wants to take its place among the major countries of the world. But for the CCP to remain in power, it must suppress free speech. China figures that if they are going to be the next great power, their ideas and values must be adopted by all nations of the world. Hence their funding for far left radical groups in the West that demand suppression of free speech. This nuttiness did not arise all by itself. Europeans have been happy to suppress only Nazi like groups and speech. Only recently have they opened this up to other groups that supposedly need special protection, despite being very much favored by government in all respects. When you view these restrictions in Europe as part of China’s vigorous campaign to make the whole world adopt Chinese values, it makes sense. China and Russia have both had longstanding programs to undermine the West and its freedoms.
China is absolutely nothing.
China owes damages of ~$200+ Trillion globally for the illegal release of “China Flu, 2020.”
There is a shortage of people under the age of 40 in china. They are going to have a demographic crash.
The situation is dire across the globe right now. Elon has said this is a do or die situation here in this country. Canada is passing an extreme censorship bill C-11, the UK already has criminal penalties for misgendering someone or offending someone’s so-called ‘identity’ and the EU is moving this way too. Germany has extensive censorship laws and Norway isn’t even in the EU and they are doing it too. We are clearly moving towards a global authoritarian state. It might not seem that way because we have elevated freakishness to protected status so it looks very colorful and it appears that minority groups are gaining protection. That’s an illusion though. The cudgel is the what is the focus of the movement, not the colorful people.
Here Schwaub.
She basically just summarized a dictionary definition. Maybe instead they should throw the dictionary in jail.
Ah, but the dictionary has changed the definitions.
Cambridge:
““Man” is now includes the definition “an adult who lives and identifies as a male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
In the same vein, the updated definition of “woman” reads “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.””
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire
I fear for weak minded people.
Another great comment from Upstate. To make a great point, use brevity and quote Voltaire in one comment deserves the 7 “likes” you already have.
Hullbobby,
Thank you kind sir for the compliment.
I am just a humble man of the earth, who is trying to make sense in a nonsensical world.
Oh, OT PSA, everyone in the NE, please stock up on non-perishable foods, bottled water, get out the extra blankets or sleeping bags, charge up the batteries for the flash lights, check alternate sources of heat and note where the fire extinguishers are. Pet food too.
There is a storm coming.
Another Country I’ll avoid in my travels. These yokels could have had starring roles in Dumb and Dumber.
Is it time to get rid of the entire hate speech and crime distinctions?
Olly, AMEN!
Please proofread before you post!
It is but a small step to substitute “Jew” for advocates of free speech. We have seen where Europeans have taken fanaticism before (think of the guillotine in the French Revolution). Be glad that we live in a nation that, for the time, still has the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Protect it at all costs.
Looks like Europe never really gave up its fascist tendency. After all these years and they still don’t have a free speech guarantee? Shame on the leaders and on the people for not demanding it.
Those Europeans who valued freedom left Europe for America. What remained were whimps who sell their freedom for the false comfort of “safety” and they get neither in the bargain.