“It is right and necessary for the judiciary to finally turn its attention to Catholic hate preachers who have been up to mischief on the Internet for years,” said Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, on Monday in Berlin regarding the criminal complaint filed by the Lesbian and Gay Association of Germany (LSVD) against the Catholic online portal kreuz.net Following the unexpected death of actor and comedian Dirk Bach at the beginning of the month, the portal once again caused horror among observers with a repulsive obituary. The LSVD spokesman, Manfred Bruns, a former federal prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice, finally filed a criminal complaint against the previously unknown operators for incitement of the people. “We welcome the action taken by the LSVD and agree with the associated expectations that the security authorities will act competently,” Wolf continued. On the other hand, Wolf judged the various distancing statements made by the official Catholic Church over the past few months to be symbolic politics that have not brought any effective results or changes to date. “In view of the multiple audience that is attracted here by the operators in comparison with other Internet presences described as Catholic, the Church should have acted much earlier and more clearly in this matter in order to appear credible. In any case, I well remember that until not so long ago, Catholic bishops themselves publicly used highly derogatory language.” He also recalled that it was not only people with a homosexual identity who were repeatedly at the center of the hate-fueling activities of the operators of the Catholic online portal. “Non-religious and humanistically-minded people were also regularly the target of inhumane tirades, whose rhetoric was also intended to drag the dignity of other deceased people into the mud.”[3][4] The cowardly hate speech on the internet, which the anonymous operators have been able to use without worrying, should therefore be as much a concern for non-denominational and non-believing people as it is for members of the LGBT movement. Serious efforts to uncover the names of the previously anonymous people behind the Catholic online portal should therefore not only be implemented consistently by the authorities. “Humanists should support the initiatives that want to work for effective information about the operators of the Catholic online portal and for an end to the bizarre attacks on homosexuals and people of other faiths. Because religious hatred affects us all.”
Further information
Criminal complaint by the LSVD: http://www.lsvd-blog.de/?p=3720
