Blasphemy news
There was a flurry of news on the Blasphemy amendment ahead of its discussion before the Oireachtas Justice committee today.
First – Dermot Ahern has co-opted some of Pat Rabbitte’s suggestions to the definition of blasphemy contained in the amendment. The text now being considered by the committee reads:
1. A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.
2. For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter 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, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.
3. 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.
Emphasis mine.
As pointed out by Atheist Ireland, this hardly improves matters much – since, like the deplorable English libel laws – it places the burden of proof on the defendant that their statements have genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value. Why someone should have to justify the value of their opinions on religion at all is, of course, the elephant in the room.
Atheist Ireland have made a submission to the committee that succinctly sums all that is wrong with the Ahern amendment. It’s well worth a read. One of the points they mention that I hadn’t heard before is that because a law against blasphemy privileges religious opinion over other forms, it may in fact be unconstitutional. That’s a case I’d love to see going before the Supreme Court.
All of this has apparently left Dermot Ahern “bemused” at all the fuss his little amendment is causing. Even the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe thinks it’s a lousy idea. But Ahern insists that he has a duty to respect the Constitution.
Said a spokesman:
“He has to do it because he is the Minister for Justice and he cannot wilfully ignore the Constitution. Unlike the ‘commentariat’, the Minister does not have the option of wilfully ignoring the Constitution. He is the Minister for Justice and he is advised by the Attorney General that he has to have regard to the offence of blasphemy.”
Ahern again repeated his “accept the amendment or Article 40.3 gets it” threat, which, as it’s likely that there’ll be another Lisbon Referendum anyway, is sounding distinctly hollow. The whole argument, in fact, is a crock. There is already a law punishing blasphemy on the statute books – the provision in the 1961 Defamation Act. That law doesn’t define what blasphemy is, so, as the Supreme Court ruled in 1999, it’s not possible to enforce it. If you’re being compelled by the Constitution to have a blasphemy law, surely one that is unenforceable is exactly what you want.
But Dermot Ahern, despite his protestations, doesn’t seem to want that. He seems to want a blasphemy law that can be enforced. Even if it would be unlikely that anyone could be prosecuted under such a law, the expense and trouble of going through a High Court case is likely to have a chilling effect on people speaking out against religion. And it seems almost certain that religious groups will wield such a threat, given the propensity for hair-trigger outrage among the faithful (a feature, remember, not a bug).
Finally, Atheist Ireland is holding a public meeting on the Ahern Amendment on Monday, May 25th. It’s up to the Oireachtas committee today to decided whether there’ll be anything to meet about.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I have just come across your blog and it seems to me your insights are intelligent – as opposed to being merely “clever” (like our politicians and our “spiritual leaders”).
I’ve been asking myself for years – ever since I was a child, actually – WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE IRISH PEOPLE?!!! Now I know the answer (after more than 50 years of asking myself this question). Its because we were OCCUPIED – as in RAPED AND PLUNDERED – for 800 years by the British/Holy Roman Empire, so it is INEVITABLE that we are a “stupefied”, that is, totally traumatised people.
If I systematically raped one of my children, or any other child for that matter, all throughout their childhood years, they could not possibly develop into a NORMAL (non-raping, non-plundering) adult unless they had SOME experience of a normal adult to help them come to terms with, i.e., INTEGRATE, what was done to them.
It seems the Irish are FINALLY beginning (only just, though – we have a long way to go yet) to see our Makers for what they are.
PS. I’m Irish myself, but I have always been an exile in my own country. And no, I am not a survivor of an Irish Catholic Industrial School – just a survivor of an even bigger institution, namely, HOLY CATHOLIC IRELAND!