The National Post reports
Europe’s top security and human rights watchdog is urging Ireland not to preserve “blasphemous libel” as a crime in a draft media law, saying this would flout international free speech covenants. Reuters reports that the Irish justice minister is changing a law that provides prison sentences for blasphemous libel and instead making it an offence that carries a fine of 100,000 euros. However, Milos Haraszti, the media freedoms overseer in the 56-nation Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said a blasphemy law violated international standards upholding the right to freely discuss issues of religion. “It is clear that the government’s gesture of passing a new version of the ‘blasphemy article’, even if milder than the dormant old version, might incite new court cases and thereby exercise a chilling effect on freedom of expression,” Mr. Haraszti said. In 1977 in England — which got rid of its blasphemy law last year — a gay newspaper was convicted of blasphemy libel for printing a poem suggesting Jesus was gay. The editor was given a suspended prison sentence and the paper fined £1,000. There have also been unsuccessful attempts to bring private prosecutions against Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses and the musical Jerry Springer: The Opera. Canada still has blasphemy libel on its book.
An atheistic government could have a blasphemy law, because such laws may be necessary to preserve public order. It does not matter whether the ruler believes in God (or the gods); if some of his subjects believe in God enough to cause violence over blasphemy, the ruler might well prohibit it. However such laws should be evenly enforced, and Christianity is regarded as fair game for blasphemers in Europe who would not dare insult Islam.
This is without a doubt the most unpopular piece of legislation ever proposed in my memory. It is motivated more by the public disorder in Denmark & other countries after the Mohammed cartoons than a desire to protect religious sensibilities.