Alien poster campaign’s anti-religious message

[rug]

Mouvement Raëlien Suisse v Switzerland [2012] ECHR 1598 (13 July 2012)

July 22, 2012 by Rosalind English

This case concerned the Swiss authorities’ refusal to allow an association to put up posters featuring extraterrestrials and a flying saucer on the ground that it engaged in activities that were considered immoral.

The association complained it had suffered a violation of its right to freedom of expression. The Grand Chamber did not agree, ruling that the refusal had met a “pressing social need” and that the authorities had not overstepped the broad margin of appreciation given to them in view of the non-political dimension of the poster campaign.

At first blush there is nothing remarkable about this ruling. But it was a narrow majority (nine votes to eight) and a brief reading of the dissenting opinions gives pause for thought: does the slightly loony nature of a message justify its suppression? Lurking behind the authorities’ refusal to allow the association’s advertising campaign is a sense of disapproval vis a vis their anti-Christian message; one of the campaigns the association wished to conduct featured a poster stating “God does not exist”, and on another, below the association’s website, ran the message “Science at last replaces religion”.

The dissenting minority, in other words, smelt a rat. In order to justify their interference with the applicant association’s right to freedom of expression, the authorities and local courts put forth reasons which underplayed the association’s positions on scientific atheism and gave undue emphasis to its opinions on human cloning and “geniocracy”, as well as to the possibility of sexual abuse on the part of its members.

http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2012/07/22/alien-poster-campaigns-anti-religious-message/

The decision:

http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2012/1598.html

[frogmarch]

1. The Grand Chamber

probably confused the perfectly sane robot-boinking Raelians with those nuttier-than-all-get-out Saurian-obsessed Cosmic People of Light Powerers. Tsk tsk - the Grand Chamber should have made an effort to educate itself before reaching a decision. (oops, I guess I’d better add this: )

EDIT: Than, not tan. geesh.