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Blasphemy made illegal in Ireland
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Edited Jul 24, 2009, 21:22
Re: Blasphemy made illegal in Ireland
Jul 24, 2009, 21:20
Runic Sunnyview wrote:
Like the article says...'Witness the return of the Dark Ages.'

Unbelievable:

http://www.palibandaily.com/2009/07/09/ireland-makes-blasphemy-illegal/

Normally this is the kind of thing I'd be up in arms about, but actually it's somewhat deceptive and needs to be considered in a little bit more depth than that article achieves. Far from being a "return of the Dark Ages" it's actually a pretty interesting piece of legislation.

Firstly it's important to understand the context. The Irish Constitution includes the following statement:
"The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion."

However, there's never been any actual legislation to back this up excluding specific laws protecting Christianity (not just the Catholic Church). This wasn't particularly inconsistent while Ireland had little or no immigration. Now, however, there are sizeable minorities in the country who are religious but non-Christian.

It became quite clear that legislation and the Consitution were technically contradicting one another (the Constitution does not single out Christianity for protection but the law did). As a result, the government was forced either to change the Constitution (a long process that involves holding a referendum, which was far from guaranteed to pass) or else to update legislation.

They chose the latter.

However, they were very careful about this new law and it includes the following remarkable "get out" clause:

"It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates."

This paragraph is hardly consistent with the "Dark Ages" claim. Indeed, it pretty much nullifies the entire law in my opinion.

So ultimately, this law is little more than an 'administrative tidy up'. It seeks to bring legislation in line with the Constitution without (a) a referendum, and (b) being a genuine attack on free speech.

No, it's not an ideal solution. But it's far from the extreme law that it's being painted.

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Interestingly, I actually think this legislation fails to achieve consistency with the Constitution. The new law overtly covers "matters held sacred by any religion" (my emphasis), but the Constitution speaks of a single, male deity. So polytheists and Goddess worshippers are covered by the new law while the Constitution pretty much excludes them.
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Blasphemy made illegal in Ireland (Runic Sunnyview)		 Replies:
Re: Blasphemy made illegal in Ireland (Cheema Deepinder)
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