Nation of Cowards

Muslim diversity continues to improve Ireland! Today’s awesome tidbit? Blasphemy laws!

Irish atheists challenge new blasphemy laws

Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.

The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).

It defines blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted”.

The justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said that the law was necessary because while immigration had brought a growing diversity of religious faiths, the 1936 constitution extended the protection of belief only to Christians.

But Atheist Ireland, a group that claims to represent the rights of atheists, responded to the new law by publishing 25 anti-religious quotations on its website, from figures including Richard Dawkins, Björk, Frank Zappa and the former Observer editor and Irish ex-minister Conor Cruise O’Brien.

Michael Nugent, the group’s chair, said that it would challenge the law through the courts if it were charged with blasphemy.

In fairness though, its not Muslims trying to restrict free speech in this country…

U.S. civil rights leaders said yesterday that an increase in hate crimes committed in recent years against Hispanics and people perceived to be immigrants “correlates closely” to the nation’s increasingly contentious debate over immigration.
[...]
“Reasonable people will disagree . . . but the tone of discourse over comprehensive immigration reform needs to be changed, needs to be civil and sane,” said Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League.

They don’t come right out and say it but that last article is in context of a “hate speech” law the ADL is salivating to pass. I find a little history rarely goes amiss…

There is, in fact, little historical basis to the claim that the Weimar Republic was a bastion of free speech, tragically overwhelmed by unfettered Nazi agitation. Paragraph 166 of the Weimar Criminal Code stated ‘whoever publicly insults one of the Christian churches or another existing religious society with rights of corporation in the federal jurisdiction, its institutions, or customs … will be punished with a prison term of up to three years’ (emphasis added).(21) This included hate speech against Jews, and there were plenty of such convictions under Paragraph 166 and other provisions. For example, the oft-prosecuted Nazi publisher Julius Streicher (author of the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Sturmer and a contemptible and marginal individual widely hated by his own party colleagues), was handed a two-month prison sentence in 1929 for ‘libelling the Jewish religion under Paragraph 166 of the Weimar Penal Code.’ As a result of the jail sentence, ‘Streicher’s racial views received more publicity than if Der Sturmer had been allowed to publish unchallenged … within weeks of the verdict, the Nazi Party tripled its 1927 vote in the Thuringian Landtag elections’—an outcome that should give pause to any aspiring censors

Interesting ain’t it? History is a mofo guys, and it has a nasty habit of repeating itself. And here’s the kicker, I no more want Nazi’s to be elected than Abe Foxman does. The difference between us is that I’m not pursuing policies that make that more likely.

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