Gender hate speech in the public discourse of religious leaders

Abstract

The public manifestations of religious leaders have become the target of certain social and political sectors that have gone to the courts of justice in an attempt to incriminate the conduct of ministers of worship who have addressed their faithful, or society in general, on issues related to the guidelines that inform legislative policies concerning gender ideology. The interest in the object of the work arose because, after the publication of the last jurisprudential pronouncement, in February 2018, there have been cases that, however, have not reached the courts of justice.
The purpose of the investigation is to achieve a critical assessment of the legal decisions issued so far, taking into account the protagonists of the conflict: the crime of article 510 of the Penal Code and its impact on the essential content of the freedoms of expression and religion of which The ministers of worship who, in exercise of these, inform the faithful about the doctrinal bodies of each religion applied, in the case at hand, to the guiding principles of legislative policies regarding gender ideology, are the holders.
After a detailed analysis of the interpretative lines embodied in the court rulings, I have been able to verify, first, a difference in the consideration of the case depending on whether it is a catholic or muslim minister of worship. Indeed, the judges acquit the bishops and punish the ministers of islamic worship. This circumstance could have been the main reason why, having produced more cases after 2018, they have not been brought before the courts of justice.
On the other hand, I value, positively, and in the terms that I expose throughout the development of the work, the arguments used by the judges to not punish the catholic hierarchs, especially, the one related to human dignity; element that is not considered in the judicial treatment of imams.
Finally, and with respect to the cases related to Muslim ministers of religion, I show that the role of women in the Islamic socio-religious sphere collides with the guiding principles of Law and the structuring of society in Europe that they are based on elements that come from Christianity; religion that considers the dignity of the human being, man or woman, in the inspiring parameter of any public or private action. In this sense, the function of the criminal legislator to determine the limits to the manifestations of sexist patterns that imply the formation of hate speech against women and that come from the field of religious and/or cultural beliefs related to gender presents a considerable difficulty.
In this regard, I understand that, within the range of guidelines developed by the United Nations in order to limit the assumptions that can be considered as such, the one that can be most effective comes from the recommendation to refrain from using hate speech by religious leaders, coupled with education in values respectful of equality and the denunciation of expressions of hatred of others.