Pride parade arranged for anti-gay pastor’s home - from Pink News - all the latest gay news from the gay community

Pride parade arranged for anti-gay pastor's home

By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk • April 20, 2006 - 0:00

Ake Green delivered a fiery anti-gay sermon that triggered a legal battle testing the limits of Sweden's freedom of speech

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A Swedish gay rights group is hitting back at a pastor who called homosexuality an abnormality by arranging a pride parade in his home town.

Pentecost Ake Green was convicted of hate crimes in 2004 after referring to gay people as a tumour on society in a sermon in Kalmar, Sweden.

And now gay group, RFSL, intends to impose further punishment by arranging the town of Oland's first gay pride festival this summer.

Priest Reine Medelius, an organiser of the event, said: ""Borgholm is seen as the original town of prejudice. We want to change that,"

Mr Green was later cleared of the offence but gained international notoriety amongst gay and Christian organisations for his remarks.

He delivered a fiery anti-gay sermon that triggered a legal battle testing the limits of Sweden's freedom of speech. Mr Green told the Supreme Court that his sermon was meant to warn gays that their lifestyle will result in an "eternal divorce" from God.

"If two men sleep with each other, or if two women do so, it is abnormal, just like paedophilia," Green said in his testimony.

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