Sinister blasphemy law would play into the hands of religious nut cases

If Jesus were in Ireland today, under the new law, wouldn’t he be one of its first victims, held in Portlaoise, perhaps, while lawyers debated whether he should be deported to Israel, or the Palestinian Authority, or tried here? Muslims might find their mosques under close inspection, too

WE can only speculate as to why Justice Minister Dermot Ahern is proposing to introduce a new crime of blasphemous libel punishable by fines up to €100,000. Is it to salve his conscience for having to implement other policies which offend his personal sense of what is right and wrong? Is it a government ploy to distract attention from more pressing matters? Who knows?

The minister’s side of the story is that successive attorneys general have advised his predecessors that the constitution imposes an obligation to provide legal force to article 40 of the constitution, which states: “The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious or indecent material is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”