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POLITICS

Former MP candidate: gays will ‘go to hell’

Tommy Dahlman, a pastor who was also parliamentary candidate for the centre-right Christian Democrats last year, has publicly said homosexuality is a sin. The party said it didn’t know about his views.

Published: 12 April 2015 13:20 CEST
Former MP candidate: gays will 'go to hell'
Pastor and one-time Christian Democratic candidate Tommy Dahlman. Photo: tommydahlman.se

Dahlman, 49, joined 21 other Pentecostal pastors who penned a recent opinion article in the Christian newspaper Dagen, which condemned homosexuality as a sin, “based on what the Bible says.”

Those who are gay but do not choose celibacy will “miss out on heaven,” the article said.

When the GT newspaper asked Dahlman to clarify his views, he said gays “could be lost” after death.

“They won’t go to heaven,” he said. “They’ll go to hell.” 

According to him, the Bible is “not just a novel,” and there are “uncomfortable, difficult sides to Christianity.”

Dahlman is from Trollhättan, a city 75 km north of Gothenburg, was on the Christian Democrats’ list of candidates for Västra Götaland in last fall’s elections. He ended up near the top of the Christian Democrats’ candidate list, but is not currently serving in parliament. 

In a personal blog entry, Dahlman said that he was positively surprised by reaction to the opinion piece and that he had gotten a good deal of support.

However, the views expressed in the article are not shared by the Per Eckerdal, bishop of the Swedish Church in Gothenburg.

“If you look at the whole of the Bible and the bigger context, it is very hard to come to the interpretation that they do,” he told Swedish public radio.

The party platform of the Christian Democrats, the smallest political group in the Swedish parliament, says that no one should be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation.

Urban Eklund, a spokesman for the party’s nominating committee that put forward Dahlman as a candidate at the end of 2013, said people who do not agree with the basic values of the Christian Democrats are not supposed to represent the party. 

“There was no one who knew that he had these kinds of views,” Eklund told GT. “To say as a political candidate that homosexuality is a sin should have disqualified him. But what he says as a private person is another thing. I don’t want to sit here and judge other people.”

Dahlman himself, now the newly appointed editor-in-chief of the Christian newspaper Inblick, seems to be enjoying the attention.

“The newspapers and the radio are calling. We have work to do,” he said on social media.  

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POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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