By Hilary White
LILLE, France, September 29, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A key case in France that led to a national uproar and implementation of legislation banning “homophobic speech” has been thrown out of court. After more than two and a half years of investigation and court proceedings, the judge in the Lille court in Northern France has dropped the case with no reasons given.
The case centres on the charge by a homosexual man that he was attacked in a homophobic hate crime. He was doused with gasoline and set on fire by men who, he said, used anti-gay epithets. Sebastien Nouchet was treated in hospital for severe burns.
The defence has long maintained that there was insufficient evidence to convict the alleged aggressors. A suspect was detained in May 2004 and placed under investigation, but he was later released for lack of evidence.
Before the case was finally settled, however, it was taken up by homosexual activists whose lobbying resulted in the creation of the High Authority for the Battle Against Discrimination and For Equality, or HALDE and passage of a law restricting any speech that could be construed as “homophobic.”
There is a history of homosexual lobbyists exploiting single cases of violence to create public sympathy and install laws favouring homosexual behaviour – including anti-homophobic hate crimes and same sex “marriage”. The addition of “sexual orientation” to Canada’s hate crimes law was spearheaded by homosexual activist Parliamentarian Svend Robinson, based in part on another homosexual cause célèbre, the killing of Matthew Shepard, a US homosexual.
Evidence came to light after the fact and after massive gay activist media and political exploitation, showing Matthew Shepard had been killed in a drug-related robbery for reasons that had nothing to do with his homosexuality. In 1998, ABC News’ 20/20 admitted after an investigation that the attack had not been a hate crime but was in fact a bungled robbery.
Robinson also heavily exploited the murder of a B.C. homosexual to motivate passage of the Canadian hate crimes change. In that case it was also eventually found that the Vancouver victim’s sexual orientation had nothing to do with his murder. However, in this and the Mathew Shepard cases, and in almost all similar cases, the later revelationÂthat the violence had nothing to do with the victim’s homosexuality received relatively little publicity.
The revelations therefore did not slow the Canadian hate crimes legislative juggernaut. When the legislation, which many Parliamentarians objected was a serious restriction on freedom of expression, passed, Robinson received a standing ovation in the House of Commons.
Other incidents of recent “gay-bashing” hoaxes include one last year in Mill Valley California where a high school activist faked a series of gay-bashing incidents at a high school that prompted a police investigation. The student who headed her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance admitted that she had herself been the perpetrator of the incidents, including vandalizing her own car with derogatory graffiti and making threatening phone calls to teachers.
Despite the unresolved nature of the Nouchet case, the new law in France has already been used to attack Christian opposition to the gay political lobby. Earlier this year, a French Parliamentarian, Christian Vanneste, was convicted of “hate speech” against homosexuals for daring to question the value of the law.
Vanneste objected to the law saying that it is a “contradiction in terms” and would “bolster the notion that homosexual behaviour has the same value as any other kind of behaviour, when, in fact, it is obvious that it is a threat to the survival of humanity.” For this, he was fined 3000 Euros and forced to pay an additional 6000 Euros to be split between three homosexual activist groups who brought the charges against the MP.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
France Introduces Legislation That Would Criminalize “Sexist and Homophobic Remarks”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jun/04062407.html
French Parliamentarian Fined Thousands of Euros for ‘Homophobia’
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06012609.html
British Columbia School District Cancels Explicit Gay Propaganda Play
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05092303.html