Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland made a few more videos of me babbling before I left, and has posted them to the website. I’m terrible in them — no fault to Michael, I was just worn out and burned out on the last night of my trip. You can poke fun at me if you want.
The interesting thing about them, though, is that they were made in the Oonagh Young gallery in Dublin, which is currently hosting an exhibit of blasphemous art, in blatant defiance of the blasphemy laws. Everything in there is offensive to someone; the exhibits mock religion and religious beliefs with words and pictures.
The Garda aren’t storming the place.
That’s the evil of the blasphemy laws: they make everyone a criminal, and are not being enforced, but they have the potential to be selectively enforced. That’s a very useful tool in the hands of the state; an art gallery exhibit which defies the law can be overlooked, but if someone starts really shaking up the establishment, it will be another convenient truncheon to silence dissent. I personally felt no risk at all in traveling to Ireland, because I’m just an outsider with no power, and can be safely ignored. I’d worry more if I were part of an organization with some political influence that was growing and had some shot at helping to secularize Ireland, because right now critics have the tool to break the back of such organizations with strategically applied accusations of violations of the official blasphemy laws.
It’s a very Christian approach. We’re all sinners, therefore God is justified in any action he takes against us. We’re all blasphemers, and give the state the power to condemn a common behavior, and they can be justified in the arbitrary exercise of the law.
Thank God (i.e. PZ) some influential person (i.e. PZ) noticed it.
Sounds like a brick and mortar
BlastulaPharyngula, must have been great fun.Not that hard to beat, though — any movement with enough followers to be a bother can hold blaspheme-ins all around the country and fill the jails to overflowing, jam up the courts, and make the authorities look utterly ridiculous.
Would be fun, actually.
Defamation Act 2009 (PDF) S.36(3):
(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.
The offence was designed to be impossible to prosecute. It’s a disreputable piece of legislation, but it’s of absolutely no effect.
Not quite. They can still haul you in for it, and make your life harder while you await trial, and then it’s up to you to prove your innocence. Even if no one is found guilty it can still be used to silence dissent.
In the late-70s Frank Zappa album Joe’s Garage, the liner notes describe how in the future politicians will make mundane things like music illegal and thus make criminals out of everyone.
It seemed that Zappa had accurately predicted the “Rock Wars” of the mid-80s, you know, the ones with Tipper Gore and so on.
Only on a warrant, as it isn’t an ‘arrestable offence’ under the Criminal Law Act 1997. No Garda is going to look for a warrant, and no judge will give them one, when they know the case is unprosecutable.
Thankfully, we aren’t at that stage yet. Under s. 36(2), the prosecution has to prove:
“outrage”, “substantial number” and “intends … to cause such outrage” all have to be proven (in fact, to get your warrant, you’d have to show probable cause for each of them).
I’ve no interest in defending this Act, but don’t misrepresent it. It’s really just window-dressing.
The fact that this law is impossible to prosecute is irrelevant.
The offensive part of it is that when a blasphemous art exhibition (which is legal) or something else is presented, we are reminded that our rights to free speech are at the pleasure of the “tolerant” Christians and other voodoo merchants (and that they have the power to take it away at any time).
Another point that I have never seen addressed, is that this law was introduced on the basis that the constitution required this to be addressed, yet “sedition” and “obscenity” are included with blasphemy in a trinity of evils and yet these two are deal with thus:
This is unacceptable in a country that claims to be a democracy and a republic.
Unprosecutable? It’s a thought crime, yes, but we have prosecutable hate crimes here in the U.S. which are very similar — there has to be an overt act, and a proof of intent. I don’t see any real difference. Those prosecutions go forward here all the time. (And yes, I do have a problem with it.)
Pinky and Cervantes are right.
The construction of the law is deliberate. The entire point of laws like this is that you cannot know in advance if your speech will cross the line from
“genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value ”
to
“grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion”
and you will, therefore, watch your tongue. Better safe than sorry, eh?
Also noteworthy is the bit about being culpable for “causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion” – do Irish citizens now have a legal duty to maintain the emotional states of complete strangers?
Is this duty reciprocal? Could, for example, Irish atheists and skeptics declare themselves “outraged” at being told they deserve eternal torture and torment for not believing in god(s)?
If not, how is such a de jure double-standard defensible, under either Irish or EU jurisprudence?
Pinkydead @8
I agree, it is unacceptable that the law is there in the first place. Now that I think of it, it may pose an actual danger in a case where a non-EU state requests extradition for a blasphemy charge. In that case the existence of the offence in Ireland might amount to a ‘corresponding offence’ under the Extradition Act, making extradition possible. (I’m not an expert in this area, so please take with a Siberia of salt). Not likely, but you never know.
Article 40.6.1.1 of the Constitution says
Sedition is a common-law crime and presumably remains in effect, though it touches on areas of freedom of speech and political rights protected by the Constitution and the ECHR. Seditious libel was the offence of publishing seditious statements, so abolishing that offence was (according to Dermot Ahern’s logic) OK, because the existence of the offence of sedition satisfied the Constitutional requirement. A cop-out, but not really important.
Abolishing the crime of defamatory libel just meant that the state won’t put me in jail for libelling you. Good for them.
As regards ‘indecent matter’, the vagueness of the phrase lets the Govt off the hook as long as there’s an offence dealing with stuff like child pron.
The obvious thing to do is to repeal the whole stupid section. But we’re dealing with Fianna Fáil here…
GeorgefromNY @ 10:
As regards Irish law, easy. The Constitution loooooves religion and religiousy stuff.
The EU has no competence in that area. Oh well.
The European Convention on Human Rights permits some restrictions on freedom of speech, but at least as regards blasphemy laws it leaves the question on whether or to what extent they’re “necessary” up to individual governments.
Only solution: Man De Barricades, Brudders!
Sigh…. this old failed chestnut. Honestly PZ I thought you were in favour of analysis rather than jumping on a bandwagon.
This will never be prosecuted because the law was drafted to effectively make it impossible to prosecute someone for blasphemy. I agree that it would be better to remove blasphemy from the staute book but that would require a constitutional amendment – which would be a difficult to get passed even without govt unpopularity.
Atheist Ireland – though I agree with a lot of what they stand for – have in my opinion have completely misrepresented this issue – whether through lack of understanding of political reality or just through knee jerk reactionary tendancies I’m not sure.
The law as it previously stood was open to a constitutional challange to force the govt to strictly enforce blasphemy. The law now (while I agree not ideal) makes it virtually impossible to justify a blasphemy prosecution.
Can we please move on (or have a properly informed discussion). All this faux shock and horror about blasphemous art or demonstrations is starting to mimic the creationist style tactics.
Bplurt, I don’t agree that the laws were designed never to be used. The original recommendation provided to the minister was that offense was the sole purpose of the blasphemy. Ahern changed this so that it could be one amongst other consequences, thus making it far easier to prosecute. He also included a section that clearly references Scientology, making it mord difficult for that specific group to use the law to silence their critics – something that should be unnecessary if the law is not functional. Finally, it should be remembered that the exceptions quoted earlier in this thread were not intended to be included in Aherns originally proposed law and were only included after being suggested by the opposition, and against the wishes of the minister.
Good for the Oonagh Young gallery, but I am not surprised that the art gallery is not getting into trouble. If the art gallery had a chance to effect the cash flow into the church, then the authorities would take greater notice.
The Holy Ghost and the Pac-Devil
Sasquatch Jesus
Sigmund: The net effect is that they are unprosecutable, regardless of the what the intention was in introducing them.
I’ll have to look into that question about extradition though.
@11 Thanks. V. Informative.
This is just a little thought than ran through my mind when reading this:
“…causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”
What if speaking out against the law, e.g. by suggesting it be repealed, caused outrage among the religious?
@ 18
Because that is not the only measure involved in whether something falls under the act. You are essenitally quote mining.
The measures are that (a) it cause offence to a substantial number (i.e. not just radical nutjob), (b) it doesn’t fall under artistic lecense, free speech, politcal commentary etc and (c) in the opinion of the police, the DPP and the judge it is unreasonable comment.
It isn’t a case of meeting one of those standards – thus effectively making it virtually impossible to prosecute
“The Garda aren’t storming the place.”
To be pedantic, that should be the Gardai (plural).
@ Morgan- The important points are
1) By their very presence, such laws rein in free speech.
2) Laws do not operate in a vacuum,non-prosecutable laws essentially weaken the respect for other laws and by their very presence undermine society in this second way.
3) Such laws have inherent in them, religious bigotry. Only mainline religions have the political power to press a persecution. If all 20 members of say the Voo Doo league were offended by Catholic blood/wine sacraments as blasphemy- and the CC makes no bones about theirs being the one true religion, the 20 VL members would still have no power. (All religions are cults so the word definition dodge won’t work.)
4) By their nature, such laws will foment discontent and ‘rights’ are unequally distributed.
5) Such laws have the very real danger of morphing into dictates with teeth. Political winds change or a party feels it is loosing power, well, we have ‘tools’ to shore up our falling popularity.
6) As previously noted, it is far tougher to repeal a law than pass one.
How does that work?
A hate crime is an assault committed for the intent of intimidation against a group of people.
So if a guy beats up the Hispanic kid next door because he’s got nicer shoes, he’s just committed assault. If he beats him up in order to intimidate other Hispanic people in the neighborhood, then that’s a hate crime, because the results are different. In one scenario, the community understands his violent behavior is probably an isolated incident, and they can move on. But if he’s threatening the community with the likelihood of further violence, creating an environment where certain people are robbed of their sense of security, then he is causing much larger detrimental effects, and he should be punished accordingly.
If the results are different, then the punishment may be different. That’s all a hate crime is. He’s contributing to a threatening environment for some of his fellow citizens, and that’s taken into account during sentencing.
Don’t bother complaining that intent shouldn’t influence sentencing. The law has always considered intent; that’s the whole difference between murder and manslaughter.
But you don’t even need to conceptualize it as intent affecting a single crime. You can understand it as well, perhaps better, as a second punishment for the separate crime of trying to intimidate the Hispanic community.
Both a racist and non-racist assailant have caused physical harm to the victim. That’s one crime each. The racist assailant has also made a threat against others in the victim’s community, the same as if he had written letters to them saying “I’m going to jump you.” Making those threats (like writing those letters) is also a crime, and a separate crime from the assault. The racially-motivated assailant has committed two crimes, and shall be punished for two crimes.
In fact you already acknowledged as much, when you said a hate crime requires an overt act. If it requires an overt act, then it is not a thought crime, as a thought crime is a crime of thought alone. It’s far too dissimilar to merit your equivocation, because as you know that in other perfectly reasonable areas of law, like manslaughter and murder, both action and intent matter. There’s a difference between a perp who is deliberately choosing to threaten certain people, and one whose crimes are incidentally threatening.
So you apparently knew better, but you decided to prevaricate anyway, just for the purposes of spreading your propaganda.
Is this blasphemy? To me it is a religious test put out by my government
and of course when a government officer is wrong there is no admitting it so what do you do – cover it up as usual http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5HlG2RoqSA
Understandably the sound is not good quality, however I would be interested in the opinions of your readers
I’m reminded of a bit from Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore:
All it’ll take is one zealous prosecutor or Justice Department official to start prosecuting people under this act. Even if the prosecution is unsuccessful it’ll still cost the defendant €lots. Don’t think for a second that prosecutors or police don’t charge offenses with the intent of “fining” the defendant through legal fees.
Since the US is a secular nation, the closest thing to a blasphemy law is the Flag Desecration Amendment that many in congress continue to support even though flag burning is hardly a pressing problem.
I doubt if anyone reading this has personally witnessed a flag burning which is extremely rare. The only time you see it is in the news and it’s usually a foreigner doing it.
Andreas Johansson asked:
“How does that work?”
Here is the full law.
The part aimed at Scientology is the final section.
36.—(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 €25,000.
(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.
(4) In this section “religion” does not include an organisation or
cult—
(a) the principal object of which is the making of profit, or
(b) that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—
(i) of its followers, or
(ii) for the purpose of gaining new followers.
#13:
If the law was designed to be ineffective, then why is the penalty set at €25k? Why not €1?
Thanks to PZ for his help in keeping this issue in the public mind. I’d like to reply to some of the points raised here.
The offence was not designed to be impossible to prosecute. In fact, it was designed specifically in order that it would be possible to prosecute, to rectify a flaw in the previous blasphemy law, which had been found to be unenforceable by the Supreme Court.
The original intent of the Minister was even more draconian: €100,000 fine and no safeguards. The fine was reduced and the safeguards added under political pressure, and at a time when the opposition had withdrawn their calls for safeguards and had called instead for the offence to be removed from the Act.
Despite the safeguards, the law is still dangerous, and that is why it is necessary to maintain the pressure to have it repealed and the blasphemy reference removed from the Constitution.
It is dangerous because it is in conflict with other sections of the constitution, and because it protects only the fundamental beliefs of religious citizens.
It is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, by making it one of the conditions for a prosecution.
It is dangerous because, despite the supposed safeguards, we simply do not know how it will be interpreted or implemented (nobody predicted that the Irish abortion referendum would have led to the State taking an injunction against a raped teenager to prevent her from travelling to England for an abortion).
It is dangerous because an Irish citizen could now be extradited to another State under the other State’s interpretation of blasphemy laws. The Greek courts have already issued a European Arrest Warrant against an Austrian cartoonist for blasphemy, and while his conviction was overturned on appeal there may have been a more serious outcome.
Worryingly, this law is also dangerous outside Ireland. In recent years, Islamic States have been trying to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level. Ireland has voted with our fellow EU States against this concept. Now Pakistan, on behalf of the Islamic States, has adopted the wording of the new Irish law to advance their agenda at UN level.
As well as being dangerous, it is a silly law, because the problem with a blasphemy law in a modern republic is its existence, not its detail.
Fianna Fail, as usual, are hoping that the controversy will eventually go away. It will not, because we will continue to highlight it and campaign against it until it is repealed. For everybody’s sake and for the reputation of Ireland, this should happen sooner rather than later.
Michael Nugent
PZ said:It’s a very Christian approach. We’re all sinners, therefore God is justified in any action he takes against us. We’re all blasphemers, and give the state the power to condemn a common behavior, and they can be justified in the arbitrary exercise of the law.
PZ’s statement, and the comments here show the cowardice and hypocrisy of lefty atheists, who gleefully bash Christians, from whom they have nothing to fear, but are intimidated into saying nothing about the Mohammadians.
In reality this law has very little to do with Christians, and everything to do with with to with the “Religion of Peace,” AKA Islam. As Islam invades Ireland and the rest of Europe the elite, leftist leaders who intend on “diversifying” the continent want to stifle the voices of the native populations who might object–this is one tool to do that. Hate Speech laws have the same purpose. The context of the law is that Islamic states got the UN to pass a UN resolution demanding blasphamy laws to outlaw anti-Islamic speech:Islamic countries Monday won United Nations backing for an anti-blasphemy measure Canada and other Western critics say risks being used to limit freedom of speech.
No images of the “exhibit of blasphemous art” seem to be online, I’m going to guess that it is rich in Piss-Christ imagery, but poor in Prophet-as-pedophile pictures. I’d love to be proven wrong on this though.
An excerpt of a local opinion below:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/i-have-the-right-not-merely-to-offend-people-but-to-intend-to-1838176.html
“I have the right not merely to offend people, but to intend to
By Kevin Myers
Friday July 24 2009
Well, we have seen in other jurisdictions that outrage is a negotiable commodity, largely dependent on the agendas of rabble-rousers.
Baptists and Presbyterians, Methodists and Catholics, Jews and Buddhists do not call for blasphemy laws these days. Only Muslims do.
So, our blasphemy could become a licence for zealots to impose their vision of society upon the rest of us. Who now in the Irish media will comment upon the nature of Islam and its impact on Irish life? If someone does, and the zealots are able to summon the necessary outrage for a successful prosecution, they will for certain seriously damage our basic freedoms of speech: and if they fail, then that is another reason for them to feel marginalised and victimised within this horrible bigoted Christian/secular society of ours, which we should change to suit them, NOW.
“
@ David Brooks, I have no idea where you got ANY of that from…
I wrote a blog post about this a while ago if any of you are interested in checking it out:
http://doctorcrankenstein.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/return-to-the-middle-ages/
Posted by: doctorcrankenstein Author Profile Page | February 15, 2010 11:26 AM
@ David Brooks, I have no idea where you got ANY of that from.
If you go clicky clicky on the blue type on my post (those are “hyperlinks” which, as if by magic, transport you to distant locations in the World Wide Web) you will see where I got that from.
Offending Islamists is becoming criminalized in not just Ireland, but in much of Europe. See:
Brigitte Bardot on trial for Muslim slur
PZ’s statement, and the comments here show the cowardice and hypocrisy of lefty atheists, who gleefully bash Christians, from whom they have nothing to fear, but are intimidated into saying nothing about the Mohammadians.
have we ever mentioned how xians are also ignorant, and are extraordinarily credulous regarding conspiracy theory?
oh, and if you aren’t being pig ignorant, you’re being fucking lazy:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=islam+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F&sa=Search