A woman in Norway is facing up to three years in prison on criminal hate-speech charges after saying that a man cannot become a lesbian.
nypost.com
A woman in Norway is facing up to three years in prison on criminal hate-speech charges after saying that a man cannot become a lesbian.
Tonje Gjevjon, a lesbian filmmaker and actress, was informed on Nov. 17 that she was under investigation for speaking out against prominent Norwegian activist Christine Jentoft on Facebook. Jentoft is a transgender female that often refers to herself as a lesbian mother.
Jentoft previously accused another woman, Christina Ellingsen, of transphobia for a similar claim. Ellingsen is also under investigation and faces three years in jail if found guilty.
The post on Gjevjon’s Facebook page under investigation read, “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.”
Gjevjon has said that she intentionally posted her Facebook message to draw attention to Norway’s hate speech laws.
Gjevjon’s comments appear to be under investigation for falling under a 2020 amendment to the country’s penal code that added “gender identity and gender expression” under protected categories from hate speech. People found guilty of hate speech face a fine or up to one year in prison for private remarks, and a maximum of three years for public comments.
...
So she intentionally broke the law, to "challenge" it, and now thinks she should be exempt from the consequences?
Do you agree with her?
Wow. One a “free thought” forum someone is actually defending punishment for blasphemy. Fucking clown world.
Well, do
you? Feel that she should be immune from legal consequence? If so, on what grounds?
This particular speech would not be against the law in my country (the United States) and I'm alright with that. Our characteristically broad interpretation of free speech has its consequences but that suits our generally libertarian common culture.
But what you cannot have is a system of law in which some people are held to the letter of the law, while others are prosecuted. Norway
does have constitutional freedom of speech, and if Gjevjon wished to challenge this law, she could have done so so by using her platform to challenge the legitimacy of the law and call for its legal removal, not by simply breaking it. If one
does publically and intentionally break a law - and sometimes, in the course of civil discourse these things must happen - one should expect at the very least to be charged with your crime, which at the moment is all that has happened. She will have her day in court, which seems like the outcome she wanted anyway. Like a protestor blocking an intersection, I'm sure she thinks her actions were justified by her personal ideological commitments. But if you block an intersection and refuse to move, the police
will eventually arrest you. Maybe the court will even take the ideological angle into account when it comes to sentencing, though publically stating that she was aware of and fully meant to break the law is probably an action her lawyers would not have recommended as far as that goes. Had they failed to lay charges at all, it would essentially be an admission by the state that its laws are meaningless, that if you're a celebrity you can get away with anything. This is not a stable situation for a country to be in.
