Two months ago, I wrote about how cross-border interaction, namely the EuroPride, helps to accelerate the development of human and LGBT rights in certain countries. Today’s post deals with how reactionary thinking from the outside affects the public discourse of a society.

My last entry was about pedophilia and how we need to draw the line between it and some people’s erroneous correlations to male homosexuality. In Germany, a public discussion about this has been more or less absent despite several recently revealed cases of pedophilia.

Now this has changed and media does indeed report and discuss the issue. This is mostly due to the statements of the “secretary of state” of the Vatican, Cardinal Bertone. While visiting Chile, he claimed that there are many scientific findings supporting the thesis that homosexuality and pedophilia are indeed linked. Now I do not want to go into this issue again. My point is a different one this time.

The first German-speaking media to pick up Bertone’s statements were websites run by religious and conservative fundamentalists. From there Bertone’s statement spread to the mainstream. Now the interesting aspect is that many of these blogs are written in German but are located abroad. The blog kreuz.net is a premium example for a blog that is set up in the United States and operates from there for a German audience.

Why do they do that? It is mainly because these blogs face a problem with their legality. By all means, Germany is a liberal country with a far reaching freedom of speech, but as a reaction to our history we have established quite strict rules as to how far this right can go before it hurts democracy and the protection of minorities which is an integral part of democracy to our understanding. So in order to escape prosecution for defamation these blogs have moved to countries where they are protected by law, in particular the United States.

Lately, they have become quite successful with influencing the German discourse from time to time. They import ideas which are then discussed by mainstream media. You may argue that sooner or later the German media would have picked up the statement by Bertone anyway. You are probably right.

But the difference is that now you have a visible outlet in German language which argues against LGBT rights and people are directed to this outlet by the German mainstream media referencing it. So what should or could be done.

Obviously, we cannot restrict the Internet to an extent where we block sites we as a society do not appreciate. Apart from the inherent legal and technical problems, I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of banning ideas or the organization they are represented by from the public domain. I believe in openly engaging with these people and let arguments speak for themselves. I know that at some point certain behavior becomes unbearable for a society and the state has to act. But it is hard to draw the line and it is no easy thing to do.

Thus, we only really have one way to deal with these sites — openly engaging with these sites and using their websites as a platform for our arguments. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of comments on kreuz.net are now posted by opponents of their thoughts and stance. This is certainly a proof point that this strategy can be successful.

So a society might actually benefit from the “invasion of ideas,” even if they are reactionary. This is for the simple reason that a society which is used to liberal Human and LGBT rights sometimes forget the value of its achievements. Provocation from the outside is thus an ideal stimulus for a discussion and a reassurance that human rights and equality values are a good thing worth fighting for.

From this point of view, I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to kreuz.net and similar websites! Thank you for reminding us all that we came a long way and that it is worth defending our achievements.

What do you think? Would you like to join me in saying thank you?