A 72-year-old London street preacher has been acquitted of harassment charges after he was prosecuted for handing out Bible tracts in an “LGBT safe space,” according to a press release from Christian Concern.
Richard Johnson, who has been supported by the Christian Legal Centre, was prosecuted under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 after copies of the illustrated tract “Doom Town” were distributed in April 2025.
The tract retells the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah and applies an evangelical Christian message about sin, judgment, repentance and salvation.
Section 4A of the Public Order Act makes it a crime to use “threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behavior, disorderly behavior, or displaying threatening, abusive, or insulting writing, signs, or visible representations.” with punishments of up to 6 months in prison.
“One of the complainants gave evidence at the start of the trial. He described the tract as shameful and inflammatory and repeatedly said that reading it made him angry. He objected to its treatment of AIDS, the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative and its teaching on homosexuality. The defence cross-examined him on the distinction between anger and offence on the one hand, and the statutory concepts of harassment, alarm or distress on the other.
The court heard that Mr Johnson had not handed the leaflet to the complainant personally. A friend gave it to him after others had followed Mr Johnson from the vicinity of Comptons.’
According to the complainants, they were very distressed after receiving a copy of the tract from Johnson (who describes himself as a former homosexual become becoming a Christian)
One complainant told the court that Soho should be regarded as a “safe space” for LGBT people, arguing in effect that the area ought to be protected from messages viewed as hostile to that community, creating what Mr Johnson’s legal team described as a de facto “gay buffer zone”.
John’s lawyer, Michael Phillips, argued that “the same rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression apply there as in every other part of London, and that the criminal law cannot create areas where lawful speech is judged by a different standard simply because it is unpopular with a particular audience.”
While court intoned that they found the material offensive, “the prosecution had not proved all the elements of the criminal offence – in this case that the high threshold required before freedom of expression can be restricted.”
