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E-mailTo hell with this: Ireland's new blasphemy laws
If I want to say &%?!# then I'll damn well say &%?!#
Now, more than ever in its history, Ireland needs the freedom to blaspheme.
If you have recently seen the value of your home drop a couple of hundred grand, and have lost your job, you could be forgiven for spending a lot of time taking the Lord's name in vain.
But be warned: Under new proposals from Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, blasphemy could end costing you €100,000 ($133,000).
In a new section in Ireland’s Defamation Bill, the minister wants to insert a clause saying “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offense and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”
The police could also have the powers to raid alleged blasphemers' homes and seize their blasphemous material.
In the proposed bill, blasphemous matter is defined as material that is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.”
This seems like a seriously bizarre step – you would think, after all, that Ireland has far more pressing matters to attend to right now. Like its survival for, instance.
Furthermore, this comes at a time when Britain, Ireland’s nearest neighbor – from where much of Irish law derived – repealed its blasphemy laws last year.
For heaven’s sake, then, where did Ahern get this ludicrous idea from? It certainly hasn’t been because of any widespread public support.
In response to a question from IrishCentral, Martin Long, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops in Ireland, said Thursday that they were not consulted by the minister on these proposals, and had yet to study them.
Brian Merriman, a spokesman for Ireland’s Equality Authority, an independent body set up to combat discrimination in Ireland, told IrishCentral that his organization had not been consulted, and had nothing further to say on the matter.
And a spokeswoman for the Irish Immigrant Council, Ruth Evans, said that this “was not really something that we would have a view on.”
A spokesman for the Irish Department of Justice said that the minister is not introducing a new Bill per se – rather, he is amending a defamation law dating back to 1961 which refers to blasphemy and which includes a seven-year prison term if you're convicted.
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