Readers' Blog: Why get rid if blasphemy laws are so weak?
It is hard to see the point of voting to remove the word “blasphemous” from the constitutional article on decorum in public life.
For the religiously-minded, God does not need legal protection, but the clause at least requires some level of respect towards the sensitivities of the religious to the things they regard as truly sacred.
Removing it sets a jarring note of contradiction in an age that is otherwise so careful to avoid giving offence across a whole spectrum of views.
The argument has been made that blasphemy laws are so weak as to be unenforceable anyway, and therefore, no merit in keeping them in the Constitution.
For sure, not a single prosecution over blasphemy has taken place in recent times, and that despite the determined efforts of some to make themselves into a cause celebre on these grounds.
But surely this argument could be extended to blasphemy’s constitutional travelling companions of “sedition” and “obscenity” — both of which are alive and well in this State.
Has a single columnist or TV pundit ever been prosecuted for endless column inches attempting to undermine the very mechanisms through which this State came into being?
For claiming to greater or lesser degrees that 1916 through the 1918 general election and subsequent War of Independence were a bad mistake, and the State which followed it a “failed state”?
And where does one even start with obscenity? Then why not remove these from the Constitution as well?
Last but not least, if blasphemy laws are truly so weak as to be a waste of time anyway then why are we spending millions on a referendum aiming to remove them from the Constitution instead of on say, social housing or hospital waiting lists?
An interesting set of priorities for 21st century secularists.
