Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.03.2012, Blaðsíða 14

14
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 3 — 2012
The great psychologist
Alfred Adler once ob-
served that “exagger-
ated sensitiveness is an
expression of the feel-
ing of inferiority.” One
of his successors in Iceland is a case
in point.
Iceland psychologist Pétur Maack
has filed criminal charges against Snor-
ri Óskarsson, an elementary school
teacher in the northern city of Akureyri,
for having the temerity to point out on
his personal blog that there are still
some people in this world who do not
approve of homosexual behaviour.
This, according to Dr. Maack, violates
Iceland’s hate crime statute, which
provides that “anyone who in a ridicul-
ing, slanderous, insulting, threatening
or any other manner publicly abuses a
person or a group of people on the ba-
sis of their nationality, skin colour, race,
religion or sexual orientation, shall be
fined or jailed for up to two years.”
As I have pointed out before, Ice-
landers have a hard time understand-
ing the American concept of freedom of
expression. To many of my compatriots,
you are free to express yourself in any
way you want, as long as it doesn’t of-
fend anyone.
Salman Rushdie pointed out, “With-
out the freedom to offend, it [freedom
of expression] ceases to exist.” Dr.
Maack and the Akureyri school board,
which suspended the teacher after
discovering his post, are attempting
to censor a view that in the past gen-
eration has become out of fashion. We
don’t have to go back in time or travel
very far to find widespread condemna-
tion of homosexual behaviour. I imagine
that many people—and certainly a not
insubstantial number of Icelanders—
would agree with Snorri’s belief that
homosexuality is immoral.
For the record, I am not one of
those people. I believe that all human
beings should be free to act however
they please, publicly and privately, as
long as their actions do not harm oth-
ers. I believe that committed same-sex
couples should be granted the same
rights under the law as committed het-
erosexual couples. I personally find it
abhorrent that there are people who
actively attempt to interfere with the
sexual and social lives of their fellow
citizens. I believe that blindly quoting
the Bible to support an argument (and
it can support just about any side of any
argument) is a sign of intellectual lazi-
ness.
However, I’m a strong believer in the
wisdom of the childhood rhyme, “Sticks
and stones may break my bones, but
words will never hurt me.” I know what
you’ll say—words can hurt people, es-
pecially children, like the ones taught
by this teacher, who haven’t learned
how to cope with bullying behaviour.
But the world is a rough place. Not
everyone is going to agree with every-
thing that you hold dear. It is our re-
sponsibility—as parents, as citizens, as
human beings—to stand up for what we
believe. Unless we are threatened with
force, we should use our reason and
our words to refute contrary views. Re-
sorting to the use of force to vindicate
one’s personal point of view—and make
no mistake, the state’s power to fine
and imprison is an exercise in force—is
the essence of bullying.
Noam Chomsky once stated that
“If we don't believe in freedom of ex-
pression for people we despise, we
don't believe in it at all.” I don’t know
Snorri, and I certainly don’t agree with
his belief that homosexuals will burn in
hell. But, to the best of my knowledge,
he has never threatened anyone with
physical harm (at least not in this life),
has never publicly abused any indi-
vidual for his or her lifestyle, and has
never attempted to indoctrinate his pu-
pils with his views on the matter. The
school board’s actions and Dr. Maack’s
showboating are only making a martyr
out of Snorri, and will only push those
who think like him into a corner.
It is the acme of irony when a popu-
lation that was once persecuted dem-
onstrates the intolerance for opposing
views that it once condemned in its
oppressors. Just as homosexuality has
never really posed a threat to Christian
society (despite the frequent thunder-
ings of preachers and politicians), so
Christian beliefs pose no threat to the
LGBT community—as long as those
beliefs are not translated into repres-
sive laws or similar actions. A society
that can imprison an individual for their
religious beliefs also has the power to
imprison an individual for their sexual
orientation.
If we want to live in a free and open
society, we need to grow thicker skins
and follow the rules we learned in kin-
dergarten: Play nicely with the other
children. Use your words, not your fists.

THE FREEDOM TO OFFEND
Opinion | Íris Erlingsdóttir
Following four months
of intense debates, Ice-
land’s Constitutional
Council handed Alþingi
its proposals for a new
Constitution. That was
July 29, 2011. Now the Council has
been asked to reconvene for a four-day
session of further deliberation. Un-
fortunately, the Icelandic parliament’s
handling of the proposals has not done
constitution reform much good, and
furthermore, the planned road ahead
seems ill advised.
THE BACK STORY
Following the financial crisis in 2008
and the subsequent parliamentary
elections in early 2009, the victorious
left-wing government embarked on a
journey to revise Iceland’s Constitution
of 1944. A Constitutional Assembly of
25 people, voted for in a popular elec-
tion held last year, were supposed to
draft a proposal. I was one of the 525
candidates who ran and one of those
lucky twenty-five to gain a seat after
the original count. Unfortunately, the
Supreme Court deemed the results
invalid in early 2011, citing procedural
problems.
Parliament, however, chose to by-
pass the ruling by changing the name
from “Assembly” to “Council” and of-
fering the same twenty-five people
seats. This was, in my opinion, a bad
decision. The right approach would
have been to redo the election—not to
rebrand the body in question. Those
of us with seats had to decide either
to take part in the process, which you
could say was flawed, or to relinquish
our seat to someone who has no prob-
lem with Supreme Court rulings being
ignored. I chose the first option, along
with the rest of the group with the ex-
ception of one person.
Bringing this all up again might
seem pointless or even mean, but when
it comes to constitutional reform, it
doesn’t sit well with me that the rul-
ing government write the rules, as the
game unfolds, hoping that everything
will somehow turn out fine.
LET’S CALL THE COUNCIL!
The Constitutional Council, which for-
mally ceased to exist six months ago,
is being asked to convene on March 8
through 11 to discuss questions from
the parliamentary committee responsi-
ble for constitutional affairs. Following
this brief session, the Council can, from
what I understand, make amendments
to its own proposals, and the resulting
document will then be put to a referen-
dum by the end of June, on the same
day as Icelanders vote for President.
I have serious reservations about this
set-up. First of all, when parliament was
voting to have the Council reconvene,
there were no concrete proposals avail-
able with respect to what they thought
needed changing, for either legal or po-
litical reasons. A few days later a short
statement was made public to the me-
dia, including: “Take a better look at the
chapter about the president.” Members
of the Council have since then received
a four-page letter from parliament.
The letter is a fair enough memo, but
it still includes no concrete proposals
for what should be changed and how it
should be done.
Parliament, which is solely respon-
sible for amending the constitution,
should have examined the proposals
both from a legal and a political point
of view. It seems that neither has been
done. No thorough legal analysis of our
document has been made on behalf of
parliament, and it seems, as many MPs
claim, that this step can wait until after
the referendum. I firmly disagree. The
idea of voting on a law before preparing
it seems irresponsible to me.
If the goal of the March meeting of
the Constitutional Council was solely
to give our opinion on some ideas that
parliament might have with regards to
our proposals then that might be fine.
However, that is not the case. The plan
is to put our decisions directly to a
referendum, without any further legal
expert analysis, and without giving the
Council resources needed to accom-
modate for such an analysis.
And I do have a problem with tak-
ing part in submitting something to a
popular vote without it first being at
least examined—if not approved—by
parliament. It is parliament that has the
power to amend the Constitution, and
it cannot push that responsibility away,
even if it wants to.
Photo by Gúndi
Opinion | Pawel Bartoszek
THE pARLIAMENT THAT WOULDN’T