Why is it a crime to say skeletons can’t be trans?

In December, Emanuel Brünisholz will begin a 10-day stint in a Swiss prison. His crime? Stating the scientific truth that skeletons cannot be transgender.

Brünisholz’s dystopian tale begins in December 2022. In response to a Facebook post by Swiss National Council member Andreas Glarner, Brünisholz, a wind-instrument repairman from Burgdorf, wrote: ‘If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.’

In August 2023, Brünisholz was interviewed by Burgdorf police, who interrogated him over the ‘intent’ of his comment. Then came a prosecutor’s letter, informing him that he had been charged with ‘hate speech’ against the relatively new category of sexual orientation in the Swiss Criminal Code. He was convicted and fined 500 Swiss Francs.

He appealed this conviction, but was unsuccessful. In December, a court reaffirmed the guilty verdict, and Brünisholz was ordered to pay an extra 600 Swiss Francs in court costs. Brünisholz, unwilling to throw more time and money at this ridiculous assault on his free speech, did not appeal further. He has since refused to pay his fines and court fees and, as a result, will go to prison.

The censorship of gender-critical speech and the accompanying assault on truth is bad enough. But the logical and linguistic contortions in the original judgement make matters even worse. In one passage, the judge wrote:

‘LGBTQI means lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer and intersex, and denotes therefore different sexual orientations. It’s a loose group of people who consider themselves a part of the aforementioned sexual orientations. Therefore, LGBTQI is a group of people with specific sexual orientations.’

Come again? According to this court, ‘transgender’, ‘queer’ and ‘intersex’ are sexual orientations, when clearly they are not. Lesbian, gay and bi are orientations. Intersex is a distinct condition. The rest are self-appointed identities.

The judge went on to state that Brünisholz ‘therefore maintains that sexual orientation according to LGBTQI does not exist, but is a mental illness. He therefore denies the people who belong to this group their human right to existence.’

This is simply not true. Brünisholz denied no one’s existence. He ridiculed the notion that men can become women and women can become men, and pointed out the male and female skeletons are distinct. That is all. He was criticising the idea of gender identity, not attacking homosexuality or bisexuality.

The judge also refused to accept Brünisholz’s statement that he did not know precisely what ‘LGBTQI’ meant. But why is that so unbelievable? The acronym is a fast-moving target, endlessly extended and redefined. It’s entirely plausible that Brünisholz didn’t know what it meant. Yet the judge was adamant: ‘it can clearly be gleaned that the accused wrote about being a man and being a woman and therefore about sexual orientation.’

The judge’s incoherent reasoning is telling. Swiss hate-speech law covers sexual orientation, but not gender identity. Brünisholz criticised gender identity. To convict him, the judge had to twist words like ‘transgender’ and ‘queer’ until ‘man’ and ‘woman’ themselves became sexual orientations.

Then comes the most ominous part of the judgment. Brünisholz is told that his punishment is ‘a lesson, to bring home to him the seriousness of the matter’. This shows that the point of the sentence is not merely to punish Brünisholz, but also to frighten others into silence. It is to make an example of him.

That is the true purpose of the case: to send a message to all of Switzerland that criticism of gender ideology will not be tolerated. Perhaps that’s not surprising in a country where you can change your ‘gender identity’ for 75 Swiss Francs at the local registry office.

And so a man goes to jail for telling the truth. The law, which is meant to protect freedom, has been used here to undermine freedom. Unless the Swiss wish to live in a society where courts enforce conformity to trans ideology, this case must be a wake-up call. It’s time for Switzerland to stand up against this anti-scientific, illiberal nonsense.

Andrea Seaman is the managing director of Bündnis Redefreiheit (the Alliance for Free Speech) and the co-president of LGB Alliance Switzerland.