(OPINION) One of the most legendary soccer players of his time received a jail sentence and a fine for posting “transphobic” social media messages citing the Bible’s creation account.
“God created Adam and Eve,” wrote retired Greek football legend Vassilis Tsiartas in the second of two Facebook posts opposing a law that would have lowered the age to legally change one’s gender to 15 and removed other legal barriers.
The 49-year-old initially responded by saying, “I hope that the first sex changes will be made to the children of those who voted for this abomination.” Members of Parliament may as well “legalize pedophiles and complete their crimes” against nature, he wrote.
While citing the Book of Genesis, the 18-year soccer standout explained his faith-based objection to extreme gender ideology and the redefinition of marriage. “Anyone can have his preferences whether he is a man or a woman, and I completely respect that.
For me, however, a couple is only a man and a woman, the rest are just together. I’m not going to accept all the weddings, all the parades, and anything else they do as normal,” Tsiartas wrote. He said he had no time for anyone who claims “those who don’t agree are racists.”
Human “dignity,” he said, came from a higher power than mankind. “God created Adam and Eve. The rest of gender identities were manufactured for consumption,” he concluded.
Tsiartas received a 10-month suspended prison sentence and a suspended fine of 5,000 euros from the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Athens. The Transgender Support Association, which brought the lawsuit, called punishing his biblical views “particularly important for the transgender community.” Tsiartas plans to appeal the decision.
The ruling marks at least the second time a European court has ruled that biblical values violate the human rights of transgender individuals.
In 2019, a British court ruled that “belief in Genesis 1:27, lack of belief in transgenderism, and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others.” Genesis 1:27, often cited as the cornerstone of human rights, states: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
“This I understand to be legalese meaning that my belief in God and the dishonesty of using transgender pronouns is akin to Nazism,” wrote Dr. David Mackereth, a Reformed Baptist physician who was fired from his job with the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions in 2018 for theoretically declining to refer to “any six-foot tall, bearded man” as “madam.” (READ MORE)
