Why is Switzerland jailing homophobes?

Making anti-gay comments in Switzerland could now land you with a 60-day jail sentence and a hefty fine.

This is what has happened to Alain Bonnet, a 65-year-old Franco-Swiss polemicist who uses the pseudonym, Alain Soral. In 2022, Soral released a video calling a female Swiss journalist a ‘fat lesbian’ and an ‘unhinged queer activist’. He was initially convicted of defamation and given a fine by a court in the canton of Vaud. Soral then appealed the decision, claiming it was unjust. The state prosecutor also appealed, claiming the judgement was insufficiently severe.

In October, the Vaud cantonal court ruled that the original punishment was not enough. It found Soral guilty of discrimination and incitement to hatred, and promptly sent him to jail for two months.

Soral might now turn to the highest Swiss court for a further appeal. And if that fails, he may then take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. Either way, it doesn’t look hopeful for him.

There’s no doubt that Soral is a deeply unpleasant figure. He was convicted in France in 2019 of Holocaust denial, he brags about how he beats people up in clubs and he considers himself an expert on how to have sex with as many women as possible. Yet if freedom of speech is to mean anything at all, it must also mean freedom of speech for those whose views we find objectionable.

Soral’s conviction sheds light on the dire state of free speech in Switzerland. Above all, it exposes the folly of Switzerland’s decision in 2019 to make homosexuality a protected characteristic under the law. This legal change, voted for in a referendum, was always likely to lay the groundwork for the criminalisation of homophobic ‘hate speech’. And so it has proved.

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