We must discriminate gay people in order to prevent those who really hate gay people from gaining strength. In short, this is what Elisabeth Sandlund of the Swedish Christian daily Dagen writes in a leading article.

I recognize this line of thinking from the 1990s, when prominent Social Democrats launched similar ideas in order to halt the success of the racist party Ny Demokrati. Restrictions on immigrants were legitimized by fear of identical restrictions being imposed by other political parties in the future.

The problem with this is that any measures can be justified. There are small groups of Islamist radicals in Sweden that would love to behead Mrs Sandlund for being a Christian woman not wearing a burqa. Perhaps we ought to do the work for them in order to prevent these groups from achieving political power? Of course not. That would be absurd. And so is Elisabeth Sandlund's article.