News
Irish could get to vote in a referendum on Ireland’s new blasphemy law
DERMOT Ahern, the Irish Justice Minister, is proposing a referendum this autumn to remove the newly-introduced offence of blasphemy from the Irish Constitution, along with two other referenda that the government is already committed to.
Dermot Ahern
Atheist Ireland, which tirelessly campaigned against a law that made Ireland the laughing stock of the Western world, revealed today that the Minister told the Sunday Times:
I was only doing my duty … there was an incredibly sophisticated campaign [against me], mainly on the internet.
AI thanks everyone who has helped to make the campaign against this new law as effective as it has been to date.
It is now important we maintain the pressure on this issue to ensure that the referendum happens as proposed and, more importantly, that it is won.
AI added:
We reiterate our position that this law is both silly and dangerous: silly because it is introducing medieval canon law offence into a modern plularist republic; and dangerous because it incentives religious outrage and because its wording has already been adopted by Islamic states as part of their campaign to make blasphemy a crime internationally.
Ahern told the Sunday Times that there had been:
A lot of nonsense about that blasphemy issue and people making me out to be a complete right-winger at the time … I was only doing my duty in relation to it, because clearly it is in the constitution. The attorney general said ‘there is this absolute, mandatory thing… it is an offence, punishable by law’.
A final decision on a blasphemy referendum rests with the cabinet, but if Ahern remains justice minister after this month’s reshuffle, he is likely to propose that it be added to the autumn list. The government is already committed to referenda on children’s rights and establishing a permanent court of civil appeal.
According to Censorwatch, Ahern claimed the legislation had been drafted to make it virtually impossible to get a successful prosecution [for blasphemy] out of it. A blasphemy prosecution has not been won for a century in Ireland, while powers already in force under the 1961 Defamation Act have never been used.
Brilliant
Coming so soon after the recent church sex scandals, I’d say the blasphemy law may very well be repealed.
This could allow satirists, comedians etc. to really stick the boot into the pederasts without fear of prosecution.
Since Ireland has a law making it a criminal offence to speculate that a dead hunchbacked dwarf psychopath was a cocksucker, why is there no law declaring it a crime to speculate that the Flying Spaghetti Monster wears a parachute? that Mother Goose had an abortion after being knocked up by Donald Duck? that when a unicorn inserts its horn between a virgin’s legs she ceases to be a virgin? Could it be that only the dead hunchback is the figurehead of a gaggle of parasites whose bread and butter would be threatened if the masses were allowed NOT to kiss their rear ends?
Be careful what you wish for. It’s a sword with two edges.
While it is truely sweet to legally stand in the street with a sign that says, “Fuck Jehovah”, or “Muhammed was a rapist”, you open the door for people like Fred Phelps or groups like the Ku Klux Klan to say what they want, and what they do is spew hatred and violence.
A freethinker, while supporting free speech, must know that what these dizzy politicians are thinking is that if they can tone down the rhetoric, they can tone down the potential for violence. Pass a law to stop talking shit to each other. But, instead of using a term like “hate propaganda”, they use “blasphemy”, a term that denotes a crime against god or some church.
The essential difference is that I can hate religion, but not hate it’s members. Enough said.
NeoWolfe
sure, they’ll get a referendum, but if they vote against the law, the government will simply roll out more and more referendums on it until they vote the way they want them to. just like they did with the eu constitution.
Well they didn’t need a blasphemy law when the catholic church pretty much called the shots there and sent innocent young girls off to magdelene laundries for no real reason (The magdelene sisters is on More4 this friday night for people in the UK) or when the christian brothers were knocking ten shades of shit out of kids in their care and much worse I’d always thought ireland was moving forward but this blasphemy law is a step back.
Also whats the point in bringing in a law if you’re going to make it impossible to get a prosecution out of it, what a waste of time and money, did Atheist ireland ever release that blasphemous statement they said they were going to bring out when this law was first introduced??.
Maybe a little off topic, though not much.
I just want to bring to the attention of you guys a link I found posted on Sec Cafe, leading to Chris Hitchens’ take on the abuse scandal and the Rat’s role in it.
As is so often the case, he gets right to the nub of it in the best chosen words.
Please read, and if you feel moved to post the link on any blogs, message boards, or whatever that you use, then please go ahead.
http://www.slate.com/id/2247861/
David B
The Irish Government missed a trick when it didn’t have a referendum when they had the Lisbon treaty. Instead of having a joint referendum on both the EC President and blasphemy, they gone right around the houses!
[…] Justice Minister Dermot Ahern recently announced his decision to put the law to the vote in a planned referendum later this year, Higgins’ pious panties are in […]
[…] Dermot Ahern, the Irish Justice Minister who proposed the blasphemy law, has said he will propose a referendum, later this year, to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution; a move that […]