particularly speech that may annoy, shock, or be on the minority side. As we shall see, the weight accorded by the Supreme Court to other forms of speech, especially “blasphemous” speech, is radically diferent from that accorded to a genuinely ofending, repulsive and hateful kind of speech. E | OTHER CASES OF IMPUNITY OF RACIST SPEECH We turn now to a complaint iled by the legal representative of the Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) and four well-known gay rights organizations against the Greek Orthodox bishop of Piraeus. In an interview, the bishop had said that homosexual relations were terrible distortions of human dignity with awful consequences to both physical and mental health. The applicants iled a lawsuit for criminal defamation and collective insult, claiming that these statements constitute a collectively despising act against every homosexual person, and may harm their honour and character. With order no. ΕΓ 104-2010/361/9Δ/2011, the Athens public prosecutor51 found that these statements by the bishop constitute “value judgments regarding homosexuality as such” and dismissed the lawsuit as unfounded. Members of GHM and the Humanist Association of Greece iled a complaint against another bishop for violation of the anti-racist Law 927/1979 (Article 1, para. 1, 2) on grounds of collective insult. In a public post on his personal blog, the bishop had indiscriminately attacked immigrants, Turkish people, the “nation-less”, the “godless”, the “homeland-less” and others, then criticized the Greek State because “it does not care to strip all of them of Greek nationality by sending them to hell as traitors to our homeland.” The bishop also took on “the so-called GHM, led by nation-less, godless, homeland-less false Greeks,” which “promotes the removal of religious symbols from schools, the abolition of morning prayers and of church-going! Greeks and fellow Greeks, let us awake from our slumber! ... The blood of our freedom heroes calls us to take action, in an honest, lawful and peaceful way!” The applicants claimed that they were indeed atheists and that the respondent, by virtue of his position as a high-ranking State oicial and cleric of the Greek Orthodox Church, was inciting acts that could cause discrimination and hate on the part of thousands of Christians. GHM representatives claimed that their Greek identity was blatantly put into doubt because of their minority religious identity, and more generally that the characterizations used in the bishop’s post ofend the dignity of atheists and contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of fear, hostility, degradation, contempt and aggressiveness against them. The deputy public prosecutor of Aegio (in order no. 26/2011) dismissed the complaint as unfounded on the grounds that “an absolute ban on the public expression of racist ideas is against the Constitution”. Moreover, the deputy prosecutor ruled that the post in question cannot be regarded as ofending or inciting discrimination or hate, since “the contrary view would lead to an unallowable 51. See www.greekhelsinki.gr. MAPPING ULTRA-RIGHT EXTREMISM, XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM WITHIN THE GREEK STATE APPARATUS | 51