America is Sick of Europe’s Censorship Regime

Billboard Chris and Lois McLatchie-Miller arrest in Brussels has the State Department concerned about free speech in Europe

On Thursday 5th June, anti-gender ideology activist “Billboard” Chris Elston and ADF International communications officer Lois McLatchie Miller were arrested by Brussels police in Belgium, for having conversations with consenting adults about the inability of children to consent to irreversible puberty blockers. Elston initially called the police because a deranged man was following and intimidating Miller, while calling both a fascist in Flemish. More fool Chris for thinking the hi-vis enforcers of the Woke hegemony would side with them. Within minutes, they were encircled by a station’s worth of officers, before being taken to the police station, cautioned, and relieved of their signs, which were forcibly confiscated. Written on their signs? “Children are never born in the wrong body.” How hateful.

As Elston pointed out to police, protestors gather to wave Palestinian flags and chant the genocidal slogan “from the river to the sea” in Brussels “all the time”. On May 15, demonstrators gathered outside the Israeli embassy to commemorate the “Nakba” — the 77th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, on May 14, 1948. No arrests were made, and the protests were permitted. Likewise, sexual fetishists in bondage gear, dog costumes, and other paraphernalia were allowed to march for Pride in broad daylight. But the police took issue with Elston and Miller.

One might have thought Brussels police would exercise more caution after their embarrassing attempt to shut down the NatCon conference last year. Emir Kir, the mayor of the Saint-Josse-ten-Noode district, ordered police to shut down the event to prevent “public disorder”. The rationale for Kir’s decision?

“[NatCon’s] vision is not only ethically conservative (e.g. hostility to the legalisation of abortion, same-sex unions, etc.) but also focused on the defense of “national sovereignty”, which implies, amongst other things, a “Eurosceptic” attitude…”

He did not have the same complaints about the “traditionalist” views of Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, who Brussels mayor Philippe Close invited to visit the city, alongside fourteen other Iranian officials.

ADF International filed a same-day legal challenge to contest the ban, and the Belgian court ruled in their favor, citing Article 26 of the Belgian Constitution, which guarantees “the right to gather peaceably and without arms, in accordance with the laws that regulate the exercise of this right, without submitting it to prior authorization”. It would be hard to believe the Brussels police had forgotten this fact when arresting Elston and Miller.

Of course, the police will be unbothered by claims of hypocrisy, because “anti-racist” policing bakes discrimination along ethnic and ideological lines into its procedures in order to achieve equality. Nevertheless, the police said that Elston and Miller were “violating the law” — but could not name which Belgian law superseded the right to free expression, guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Miller told Courage Media:

“Chris and I were arrested for stating a simple truth in public: no child is born in the wrong body. I called the police because we were being surrounded and felt threatened. But instead of addressing the aggression of the mob, the police arrested us—two people standing peacefully with signs, open to conversation.
That this happened in the heart of Europe is deeply troubling. If speaking up for children is now grounds for arrest, then our freedom to speak the truth on any important issue is truly in danger.”

Lois isn’t alone in her concerns. An official at the U.S. State Department, monitoring incursions on freedom of speech and the persecution of Christians in Europe, was troubled by the footage. In a comment given to the Daily Wire, they said, “We are aware of these reports and are looking into the matter. The State Department strongly supports the peaceful freedom of expression for all.” In May, a senior State Department official wrote a post on Substack, citing mass immigration, and the subsequent incursions on free speech under the auspices of multiculturalism, as a security risk for the U.S.’ continued strategic partnership with Europe.

“The suppression of speech, facilitation of mass migration, targeting of religious expression, and undermining of electoral choice threatens the very foundation of the transatlantic partnership. A Europe that replaces its spiritual and cultural roots, that treats traditional values as dangerous relics, and that centralizes power in unaccountable institutions is a Europe less capable of standing firm against external threats and internal decay.”

On February 15, the Vice President cautioned Europe’s politicians against persecuting their citizens for free and lawful speech at the Munich Security Conference. During the speech, he referenced the case of Adam Smith-Conner, an ADF client convicted at Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court on October 16, 2024, for praying silently within the vicinity of an abortion centre. Smith-Conner was sentenced to a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £9,000 ($11,700) in prosecution costs. In 2022, Bournemouth council imposed a “buffer zone” which censor protesting, speech, or prayer within 150 meters of their BPAS abortion clinic. Failure to comply can result in a £100 fixed penalty notice, or further court action.

In Munich, the Vice President said:

“And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.

He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.
So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.
In America, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. Whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, who gets to be a part of our shared society.”

Europe’s leaders have failed to take up Vance’s offer or to heed the State Department’s subsequent warnings. Just in the last month, American officials and commentators have been alarmed by the rise in arrests for social media posts to over 12,000 a year. Concern has concentrated on the case of Lucy Connolly, a mother imprisoned for 31 months for a deleted tweet, and whose appeal was denied due to her opposition to illegal immigration. A State Department spokesman said, “We can confirm that we are monitoring this matter” and reiterated that the Trump administration “supports freedom of expression at home and abroad, and remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression”.

There is the increasing sense in Washington, D.C. that American taxpayers are subsidizing Europe’s defense through NATO, while governments in Berlin, Brussels, and London turn into police states and tyrannize their populations in the name of “democracy”. If we are to remain civilizational kin, then it’s time for Europe’s governments to fulfil their side of the bargain, and sustain the inheritance of Athens, Rome, and Bethlehem rather than the ideologies of Versailles, Frankfurt, and Harvard.