A court has rightly acquitted 72-year-old Christian evangelist Richard Johnson after he was prosecuted for handing out a Gospel tract in Soho.
It is a welcome vindication for a man who spent nearly two years facing the prospect of a criminal conviction for peacefully expressing his Christian beliefs.
But we should not simply celebrate the acquittal and move on.
We should ask how a Christian evangelist handing out Christian literature on a London street ended up before a criminal court at all.
At the heart of this case is a freedom which Britain has cherished for centuries: free speech.
True freedom does not mean merely being permitted to believe certain things inside your own head, home or church. Freedom of religion necessarily includes the freedom to manifest your faith: to speak, preach, persuade, evangelise and seek to convince others.
And that freedom matters most when what is being said is unpopular.
One of the most troubling features of Richard's prosecution was the apparent suggestion that Soho's status as a centre of LGBTQ life somehow changed the landscape for freedom of speech.
One complainant described Soho as a "safe space" for people identifying as LGBTQ. The prosecution relied heavily on the fact that Richard distributed material expressing Christian teaching on marriage and sexual morality in that particular location.
The implication is profoundly troubling: perhaps Christians may express these beliefs elsewhere, but not here.
No.
Soho is not exempt from freedom of speech and Christian expression. And Christians do not lose their fundamental freedoms when they cross an invisible boundary into a neighbourhood associated with a different worldview.
The streets of London belong to all of us.
Soho may have a particular cultural history and a centre known to celebrate LBGTQ. But it remains part of the public square. Christians have exactly the same right to express their beliefs there as anyone else.
Anything less creates a dangerous principle: that particular groups can effectively claim geographical territory for their worldview and exclude dissenting voices from it.
Where would that end?
Could a predominantly Muslim area be protected from Christian evangelism? Could a Christian neighbourhood exclude atheist campaigners? Could a university declare itself a progressive "safe space" and prohibit conservative political speech?
That is not freedom. It is ideological segregation.
A genuinely free society does something much harder and much better. It allows people with profoundly different beliefs to inhabit the same streets, make their respective cases and disagree with one another.
The Christian message has always entered the public square.
Jesus told his disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations". The apostles preached in streets, marketplaces, synagogues and public meeting places. Christianity is inherently a public faith. Christians are commanded not simply to possess the Gospel but to proclaim it.
Richard Johnson was handing out a Gospel tract.
The question was never whether everybody in Soho would like its contents. Plainly they would not. The question was whether peacefully expressing historic Christian teaching had crossed the very high threshold into criminal conduct.
The magistrates rightly concluded that it had not.
That distinction between offence and criminality is fundamental to a free society.
Christian teaching about human sexuality will offend some people. Islamic teaching will offend others. Secular arguments against religion may offend. Political arguments offend people every day.
The answer is more freedom, not less: disagree, debate, reject the tract, hand it back, walk away or offer a completely different worldview.
What you should not be able to do is summon the criminal law simply because you do not want to encounter a Christian message.
That is why the language of "safe spaces" becomes dangerous when applied to public streets.
There is no fundamental human right not to encounter beliefs with which you disagree.
Indeed, the European Convention on Human Rights protects both freedom of religion and freedom of expression. Those protections would be hollow if they covered only beliefs expressed quietly among people who already agree.
This is why the issues raised by Mr Johnson's case extend far beyond Soho.
The same principles are engaged in the creation of so-called buffer zones around abortion facilities. We should all be alarmed when public spaces are transformed into areas where certain conversations, expressions or acts of peaceful witness become prohibited because they are deemed unwelcome by the authorities.
The logic is strikingly similar. In both situations we are told that particular locations require special protection from certain forms of speech. In both situations the state is invited to police expression not because it is threatening or violent, but because it may cause discomfort or emotional upset. In both situations the result is the creation of censorship zones in areas that should remain open to all.
That process is itself a punishment. Even where an acquittal ultimately follows, few ordinary citizens have the resilience, resources or support to withstand such an ordeal.
We should be grateful that the magistrates upheld the principle that free speech protections do not disappear when a message is unpopular. We should be pleased that Richard Johnson has been vindicated.
But we should also ask why this prosecution was ever considered appropriate in the first place.
Freedom of expression means little if it exists only in places where nobody objects to what is being said. A genuinely free society protects speech precisely when it is controversial. It protects the right to speak in every part of London, not merely in approved corners.
No district, community or neighbourhood should become a free speech exclusion zone. And no public authority should be in the business of creating them.
