Posted on 06/28/2007 5:56:59 AM PDT by Nextrush
The LifeSiteNews.com story published Tuesday on the jailing of Pastor Lerle in Germany has been retracted after LifeSiteNews.com was informed that we were working with false information. While Pastor Lerle has in the past been jailed for anti-abortion activities his current one year imprisonment stemmed solely from holocaust denial and not from comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust as we erroneously reported Tuesday.
My sincere apologies for this serious error.
John-Henry Westen Editor LifeSiteNews.com
No mainstream media burying here.
The retraction is out in the open.
Oops. Just a slight little error in the reporting.
This is the kind of retraction the NYT could learn something from. If you get something wrong, just say so. Everyone makes mistakes.
I am still suspicious. Did he actually deny that the Holocaust happened, or did someone construe something he said as Holocaust denial by imputing something into the words which weren’t intended? We see enough of that in the US.
.... his current one year imprisonment stemmed solely from holocaust denial and not from comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust...
Well. That's completely different then.
He's not being jailed for exercising his freedom of speech rights, but for exercising his freedom of spee.... uh..... never mind.
He’s a real Holocaust denier. He has a website (in German) were you can read his conspiracy-theories.
I’ve seen an interview with an old SS soldier whose job it was to drop the gas cylinders into the chambers. He was ridiculing the deniers when being read their theories.
The retraction notes his previous jailings were related to pro-life matters.
Of course the current sentence does touch very clearly on free speech turf regardless of the pro-life retraction.
If he’s a Nazi, I wouldn’t be part of that, but his freedom of speech is something that appears in need of protection.
Freedom of speech is limited by criminal laws. Just as you can get charged for slandering you will get charged for denying the Holocaust (here in Germany and AFAIK in Austria).
My preliminary look at his writings through Google shows no Nazi writings.
Can anyone come up with them and a link?
He still has a freedom of speech issue as far as I can see, regardless of what he says and what I’ve seen so far relates directly to abortion in his previous writings.
He wasn’t charged for slandering. We have a specific law for denying or playing down the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes.
How about a specific law for denying Armenian genocide? How about a law for denying commie crimes (GULag, Holodomor, purges, Great Leap Forward etc.)? How about a law for denying or playing down the German crimes during WW II? Where do we draw the line? This is slippery slope. I find the idea of putting anybody to prison for EXPRESSING AN OPINION (even though it may be a stupid opinion, but so what - liberals are also stupid and we don't put them to jail for that now do we?) to be totally incomprehensible in a civilized society.
Yeah, LifeSite makes those on a daily basis. Wonder how they happened to pick this one to do a retraction on. Maybe the German government goes after media outlets which deny that Holocaust-deniers denied the Holocaust.
Now you’ve done it. You’ve denied the denier denying the Holocaust. Wait, maybe you didn’t. Ah well, 50 days in jail for you!
Steve:
Those limits should pertain to actual damage done to the reputations of living persons, not to bogus opinions on historical matters. Where do you draw the line?
The Germans choose to draw it at propagandists who deliberately deny historical facts, - in order to incite political upheaval. - In effect, they are trying to prevent another national/socialist movement from forming in Germany.
For some people, the non-existence of God is as obvious as the fact of the holocaust; shall we therefore give atheists the right to criminalize religious belief, as - in fact - they have often done?
No one can constitutionally criminalize religious belief in the USA. - Where - in fact - have they "often done" so?
Story was retracted by LifeSiteNews.com as I indicated.
The correction is the latest news on it, not the original story link you gave.
The problem ultimately is that Marxist socialists in Europe don’t want a competitor in “National Socialism” rising.
The speech laws help in that regard.
The anti-immigration party of Pim Fortyn in the Netherlands took half the vote away from the Labor Party at its height.
When the Fortyn party declined, the socialists (Labor) took back the 18 seats in a proportional parliament.
The dominance of opinions like Lerle’s were responsible for the death of millions only 60 years ago. It was a national disgrace. Most Germans repudiated Hitler and the Nazis, but their influence is still present. Germany’s laws against Holocaust denial are intended to suppress anti-Semitism and domestic terrorism. Statements that would be considered by a Jewish person in the US to be merely obnoxious are in post-Holocaust Germany frightening. We have laws limiting the use of “fighting words”, I think the purpose of this law is similar. While I am strongly inclined to disagree with it and hope with time these restrictions are lifted, I can understand why these laws were passed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.