Launch of Campaign to Remove the Blasphemy Law
Launch of Campaign to Remove the Blasphemy Law
When: Sunday the 30th of September – World Blasphemy Day at 2pm
Where: The Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin
Why: At 2pm this Sunday, 30th September, World Blasphemy Day, Atheist Ireland will officially launch a Campaign to Remove the Irish Blasphemy law, by voting Yes in the referendum on 26th October. Please come along to show your support.
The launch will be outside the garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square, Dublin. There will be a photoshoot with our campaign placards, a show of solidarity with victims of blasphemy laws around the world, and details of the campaign and how you can help.
Atheist Ireland has lobbied for a decade to get this referendum, both in Ireland and at the United Nations, Council of Europe, and OSCE. We are now looking forward to a busy month seeking public support to finally remove this harmful law.
We will be working with colleagues including the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Ireland, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the International Campaign Against Blasphemy Laws, and in solidarity with victims of blasphemy laws globally.
Here are five reasons to Vote Yes on 26th October:
1. Vote Yes to support the right to freedom of religion or belief, the right to freedom of speech, and the separation of church and State. The Irish blasphemy law infringes all of these principles.
2. Vote Yes to allow Irish media outlets to deal objectively with religious issues, without having to self-censor themselves to avoid the possibility of a blasphemy case and a €25,000 fine.
3. Vote Yes to support Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, atheists and other minorities who face persecution in Islamist States. These States have cited the Irish law at the UN to justify theirs.
4. Vote Yes to remind ourselves, and show the world, how much Ireland has changed since 1937. We are now a modern pluralist State that respects freedom of religion, belief, and speech.
5. Vote Yes to agree with the many bodies that have called for removal of the Irish blasphemy law, including the 1991 Law Reform Commission, the 1996 Constitution Review Group, the 2008 All-Party Committee on the Constitution, the 2013 Constitutional Convention, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.
We look forward to seeing you at 2pm this Sunday outside the garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square, Dublin.
2 Comments
People before prophets!
This is interesting, for the very reason that no debate yet exists to determine whether a Yes or No vote on this referendum is beneficial, one way or the other, to the state of religious freedom and the freedom of thought in this country, however the arguments put forward here, for Yes, seem to be limp, incipit and weak…
1. Vote Yes to support the right to freedom of religion or belief, the right to freedom of speech, and the separation of church and State. The Irish blasphemy law infringes all of these principles.
Principles and rights are two different things: Rights are legal freedoms, principles are personal beliefs which have no statute of protection. Therefore principles cannot be ‘infringed’ – any more than ones preference for coffee can be infringed by the existence of a tea house. As such, this argument is irrelevant to the matter at hand.
2. Vote Yes to allow Irish media outlets to deal objectively with religious issues, without having to self-censor themselves to avoid the possibility of a blasphemy case and a €25,000 fine.
One no more ‘avoids’ the possibility of blasphemy by discussing religion, any more than one avoids the possibility of sexual obscenity by discussing sex – both offences are defined by what the offended party deem to be offensive – so long as you genuinely intend to discuss each subject rationally, within the rules of argumentation. Therefore there is no equivalency here and as such it is a disingenuous argument to assume that there is, or indeed that one can ‘inadvertently’ be fined for rationally discussing such. Thus, there is no more a matter of self-censorship here, if rationally discussing religion, any more than there would be in the case of someone who publishes an article on the historical place of buggery law without also publishing graphic pictorial content of same, i.e. they do not self- censor because of an obscenity law, they do so because said has no positive effect on their rational mode of argumentation.
3. Vote Yes to support Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, atheists and other minorities who face persecution in Islamist States. These States have cited the Irish law at the UN to justify theirs.
What other states do is no reason to change ones own laws, which are designed to protect these same individuals from material published to expressly offend their beliefs, therefore this argument is irrelevant as other countries in the EU, apart from Ireland also have such a law. If it was the case: that what other countries do is somehow reflective on your own laws of the land, then why not make a case for public execution as other countries, (cited) do the same? You wouldn’t, because there is no guarantee that they would change their laws merely because a state they have cited in the past has changed their’s. It’s an absurd argument to assume so.
4. Vote Yes to remind ourselves, and show the world, how much Ireland has changed since 1937. We are now a modern pluralist State that respects freedom of religion, belief, and speech.
That has already been done in 2009 when the law covered ‘all faiths’. Again, who allows their laws to suffer the caprice of ‘how they will appear to others’? Laws are not trinkets to doll up the appearance of anything, they are there to protect those who would suffer offence from an act of obscenity deemed to be profane, in the same way as removing censorship on pornography merely: “Because other countries are okay with the display of genitals on magazine covers, so why can’t we do the same?” is an absurd ask, so too is this argument.
5. Vote Yes to agree with the many bodies that have called for removal of the Irish blasphemy law, including the 1991 Law Reform Commission, the 1996 Constitution Review Group, the 2008 All-Party Committee on the Constitution, the 2013 Constitutional Convention, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.
However the Constitution reflects the conscience of the people which said protects, not unelected bodies who would force the undemocratic will merely because of a contradictory preference supported by no direct decision of that nation’s populace. Again it is a argument by appeal to ‘others’, not to the mores of the Irish people themselves, or to the historical consideration of the oppression of its faith by those people through an obscene propaganda, and colonial condescension, for which a Yes vote is nothing more that an apology for their tyranny. (Also most of those bodies cited above were set up to change the law in 2009, so it is disingenuous to cite them as ‘opposition’ when they were about reforming the law to include ‘all faiths’)
When all is considered, these arguments are not a valuable contribution to a debate on the nature or legitimacy of a blasphemy law and therefore they ought, at the very least, be rethought if said is to have its desired effect. After all for an organisation who’s expressed reason for existing was to bring forward a referendum on this very law and, by doing so, have it removed from the statute books, but when the time came for it to give reasons for voting Yes, it botched the job with weak and incipit argumentation, well then, that whole enterprise would seem to be a complete and utter waste of everybody’s time.