The Dublin public meeting was a great success. Thanks to everyone who turned up, and apologies to those who could not fit into the room.
We agreed to campaign against the new blasphemy law in four areas:
- Real-life and online lobbying of politicans.
- Contacting other relevant groups and individuals.
- Preparing legal challenges against the law.
- Public advocacy including future meetings in Cork on 3 June and Limerick on 16 June.
Can we please use the comments section on this post to discuss how the meeting went, and ideas for the next steps in each of these four areas?
Well done to the organisers last night. It really was a great meetup. One thing I would suggest is to have an email address, for example articles AT blasphemy.ie, that people could submit any blog posts or other online articles that they may have published. This gives one place to track all blasphemy articles that people are interested in publicising, which could then be tweeted from a twitter account so everyone else can stay informed.
I would suggest some level of vetting to ensure that articles are on-message and give submitters and the audience confidence that only appropriate material is tweeted.
Comment by Declan McGrath — May 26, 2009 @ 8:48 am
The meeting last night was excellent. Unfortunately, I had to leave at 9:30pm just as the discussion about campaigning itself was starting. I’m happy to get involved.
In terms of contacting politicians, these are the members of the joint Justice Committee.
The standard Oireachtas email address is firstname dot surname @ oireachtas.ie
For the record, I emailed everyone on an earlier list of Committee members and only got two replies. One was from the figurehead of the church of Dermotology himself, simply pointing to his article in the Times. The second was from Pat Rabitte’s office who stated Labour’s opposition to the law and their new position of pushing for a referendum. Nobody else replied.
[I have edited this comment at Graham's request - Michael]
Comment by Graham Cooke — May 26, 2009 @ 9:06 am
Well done to the organisers of the meeting last night.
I have a question that perhaps someone could clarify for me. The proposed law deals with the act of blasphemy -which of course is defined as ‘what everyone knows it to be’, but wasn’t some of the concerns that were raised last night with regrads to this law actually refering to the act of heresy – that is, speaking out about the dogma of a religion rather than blasphemy, which, to my understanding, is taking a gods name in vain or showing irreverence to that god?
If so then to criticise the actions of any religion would not be an act of blasphemy but one of heresy. Is Mr Ahearn aware of the difference?
All that aside, I would be interested in getting involved on a more pratical level if there is a need for envelope stuffers, emailers, admin. type people etc. etc.
Comment by Ashling O'Brien — May 26, 2009 @ 9:16 am
Congratulations Michael for organising and chairing the meeting last night. Although much of the meeting strayed from the stated theme I felt we got there in the end and some good ideas were raised ( Organising a meeting in Louth would be one way to get Dermot’s attention). Although this blasphemy law crazy and if passed will immediately tie up the courts with manufactured cases, I feel its a bit of a smokescreen. The genuine disgust most people are feeling with the catholic church after the Ryan report this week make this an ideal time to persue the broader aim of removing education and health from the hands of the catholic church. I believe there is a public appetite for this now.
Andrew
Comment by Andrew Peregrine — May 26, 2009 @ 10:07 am
Thanks again to all involved in organising the meeting. It was very encouraging to see so many people turning up to show their concern about this silly and dangerous law.
Shameless plug: I’ve blogged my thoughts on it here (Note this is my personal take on the meeting (errors and omissions excepted) – if you want to comment on the piece/knock metaphorical lumps off me, please do so over there).
It strikes me that appealing to humour and ridicule is one of the most effective ways of sway the general public against the Ahern amendment. Not that I think a terrible amount of swaying is needed. Raising awareness of what’s going on will probably be more difficult than convincing people that the whole thing is a daft.
And nothing is more precious to a politician than their reputation as a serious statesman. As the Cowangate episode showed – their GSOH seems to be in short supply when they’re the ones being laughed at. As depicting His Dermotness pictorially wasn’t forbidden by the Church, getting Conor Casby to paint some icons of the Divine Ahern in all his glory would be the perfect blasphemy.
One speaker mentioned getting more high profile media people such as Tommy Tiernan on board (with no disrespect to the excellent Robbie Bonham). I’d add people like Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews (creators of Father Ted) to that list.
If we could recruit other comedians, it surely wouldn’t be too hard to get a blasphemous comedy show together to raise awareness (he says with blissful ignorance of the logistics required).
Comment by Woesinger — May 26, 2009 @ 11:58 am
Argh – embedded link not working in the previous post, Dermot curse it!
My account of the meeting and my conversion to the Universal Church of Dermotology here: http://chartophylax.kaybensoft.com/?p=1931
Comment by Woesinger — May 26, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
When I talk to my friends and co-workers about this, what I notice is that few (if any) of them are aware of the facts. Actually, until last night’s meeting, I wasn’t fully aware of them either. I went to the meeting as an atheist who is sick of seeing religion gain more footholds in politics and education, whereas in this age of technology and science, it should be the opposite. A lot of people I’ve spoken to about the issue are glossing over over it. The vaguely informed will tell you that “the law was always there”. They don’t seem to realise that it was castrated in 1999, but would be re-enabled by this amendment. Some people are adopting a standard right-wing argument style; that this backlash is coming from “..atheists and bearded leftys with their conspiracy theories”.
This issue should have its own identity, and shouldn’t distance itself too much from ‘regular’ people by associating itself too closely with ’scary’ atheists or political parties. While I am an atheist who thinks that this amendment is dangerous, I don’t claim to own the sole rights to feel angry. I also respectfully understand that there’s a large number of Irish citizens today who had had religious dogma beaten into them as part of their low fat education. My father is one of them. He’s still a devout Catholic and he still believes a lot of the dogma. He’s also a supporter of Fine Fail (embarrassed as I am to admit it). Without any further information on this matter, he’s likely to agree with Mr Ahern. However, I guarantee you that I will be able to convince him that this is a dangerous amendment because he is a relatively normal, moderate man who’s still in possession of his faculties. I believe that providing the facts clearly and extrapolating its implications will lead the vast majority of Irish citizens to reject this amendment too.
If you want to combat hate speech and prosecute people for incitement to violence, fair enough. But let religion fall under the same banner as sexual preference, race, football team and political affiliation. Don’t give it its own special laws.
Dermot Ahern says:
“Following the 1999 Corway case, the only blasphemy action taken in the State since at least the 1937 Constitution, there is a legal obligation to ensure that article 40.6.1.i is operable. If that article is not to be removed from the Constitution by referendum then it is necessary to ensure that it is operable. To do otherwise would imply an a la carte approach to the Constitution and its precepts and principles.”
Why is it so important to make this stupid, outdated article ‘operable’ ten years on? Can’t we simply tolerate our outdated, non-secular Constitution until it can be amend?
PS: Posting email addresses on a forum like this is asking for spam. Seriously, remove them.
Comment by Paul Rafferty — May 26, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
>PS: Posting email addresses on a forum like this is asking for spam. Seriously, remove them.
Never thought about that. Would do, but can’t edit old posts (mod?). Having just done a bit of searching, it seems that the list I got is out of date. The member list of membership is on http://www.oir.ie/
[I have edited the earlier post, Graham - Michael]
Comment by Graham Cooke — May 26, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
re: comment 5
“If we could recruit other comedians, it surely wouldn’t be too hard to get a blasphemous comedy show together to raise awareness (he says with blissful ignorance of the logistics required).”
If a publicity stunt would work this would be the best kind.
Also re: comment 7
I have to agree that any campaign should be as inclusive to individuals from all backgrounds, non-religious or otherwise, and as many political ideologies as possible. I’m sure that there would be many represenitive groups that would be interested in coming on board and lobbying, they might just need the invitation.
I’m sure that there are others out there who would be wiling to give their time in a pratical sense to this campaign as administrators etc., can we arrange a meeting to discuss how we can best achieve this?
Comment by Ashling O'Brien — May 26, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
>>“If we could recruit other comedians, it surely wouldn’t be too hard to get a blasphemous comedy show together to raise awareness..
>If a publicity stunt would work this would be the best kind.
Hmm. Dara O Briain, Eddie Izzard, Dylan Moran, David Baddiel, Jimmy Carr, Ben Elton, Mark Thomas, Demitri Martin, Ricky Gervais and Stewart Lee are all, as far as I know, atheist.(Tommy Tiernan is not.) I’m not sure how big this could go, bit it seems that judging by the trend there would be plenty of comedians who would suit such a show.
Comment by Graham Cooke — May 26, 2009 @ 3:06 pm
Another possibility to raise awareness could be to stage a debate involving some prominent names. There was a debate in 2007 between Christopher Hitchens and John Waters in the Gate. Tickets sold out in a day (I couldn’t get one!), indicating that ticket sales alone may be enough to pay for such an event if the right people would be willing to do it.
It wouldn’t specifically have to be a debate about this topic. (Richard Dawkins vs Kevin Myres anyone?)
Comment by Graham Cooke — May 26, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
I would not presume that one would have to be atheist to be against this blasphemy law.
Comment by Simon McGarr — May 26, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
>I would not presume that one would have to be atheist to be against this blasphemy law
Absolutely true. This point was made by a lady on Monday. It’s important that this doesn’t get branded an “atheist cause”. But you can be guaranteed that those who are would be against it. Honestly I have not yet met anyone, atheist or otherwise, who does support it.
(The worrying this is that the groups of people who would use a blasphemy law to protect them if they were offended en mass would be the types of people who would make a point of being offended)
Comment by Graham Cooke — May 26, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
Congratulations on the meeting last night. This was my first time attending any sort of atheist gathering and it was uplifting to finally be in a room with so many enlightened people.
It was mentioned on a number of occasions that volunteers were required for a number of different tasks related to this campaign. I would be willing to donate some time to this cause and if I can be of any help please let me know.
Diarmuid
Comment by Diarmuid Boyle — May 26, 2009 @ 8:40 pm
I was at the Dublin meeting too. It seems very important we try to build bridges not cause offense. We want to win this, if someone wants to be outrageous do it afterwards. The first anti blasphemy post I came across online was on a Born Again Christians blog. Yes they believe in some fairly silly stuff when something is important enough you can sometimes end up with some odd bed fellows. We should reach out to everyone and play down the atheism for the time being. Take the high ground and a gentle humanist tone. I want to defeat this not make a radical statement and torpedo ourselves in the process.
Comment by Alan — May 27, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
Some interesting points are being raised here, however it may be better to continue this discussion under the general discussion heading and get this particular page back to the discussion of how to proceed with the campaign. I think that maybe this current discussion is a bit of a distraction from the topic of this page.
I would take it as a given that anyone who is contributing at this point would want a to campaign against this proposed law, and that any discussion would centre around how best to achieve this.
Don’t want to censor but perhaps the discussion can get back on point?
For example, do people think we should be approching all the political parties? Would it be helpful to contact other advocay groups and what suggestions are there about who these might be? Should there be a campaign similar to that used in the UK on the buses re. Dawkins? Would a large-scale email campaign similar to that used by Ray Darcy over the HPV vaccine be a help or would it prove harmful in the long run?…….
Lets put the rhetoric on hold here and start thinking creatively!
Comment by Ashling O'Brien — May 28, 2009 @ 11:26 am
Ashling, thanks for the suggestion. I have moved some comments from here to
General Discussion and Comments Part 2
Feel free to continue any discussion there that does not fit in with the specific topics of any other posts.
Comment by Michael Nugent — May 28, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
I’m not sure about the mass-email thing, and bus advertising would probably be prohibitively expensive. Plus, if we’re trying to make sure this doesn’t get labelled as an “atheist” thing, it might be too comparable to the UK bus campaign. Re advocacy groups – possibly amnesty international? Also, would the Richard Dawkins foundation be interested in helping financially?
What do people think of the ideas of a comedy show/debate?
(PS: good tidy)
Comment by Graham Cooke — May 28, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
Hi,
Just wanted to comment that before I got the email from atheist Ireland about this meeting I knew very little about this propsed law. I think that there must be a lot of other people who are the same.
I would propose that it is neccesary to raise awareness through some means about the law but unfortunately that’s all I got. Been thinking about it since Monday and can’t really think of a way to do it short of flyers (whih everyone throws out) and emails (but email lists are usually of people who already have an interest and os already know)
Comment by louise O'Brien — May 28, 2009 @ 1:53 pm
How about trying to get a slot on the Late, Late show to debate the issue, especially if we could get some high profile people involved? Their researchers have to fill a show each week and it is the traditional programme for pushing back the boundaries of Holy Catholic Ireland
Comment by imokyrok — May 28, 2009 @ 4:00 pm
Awareness could be raised if owners of bookshops, video libraries and music shops could be persuaded to put stickers on stuff which has been called blasphemous. We’d probably have more luck with independent shops but you never know, the larger chains might see it as good marketing.
Comment by Sheena — May 28, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
What about a large social event, a Blasphemers Ball if you will, hire a large enough venue, open to the public, €25 in on the door (unless you can get large acts to volenteer of course)
Fancy Dress, prizes for best prophet Mohammed, best Jesus, most invetive way of ridiculing the clergy/pope
Would be great craic, idea can be recycled to celebrate this bill not going though / defiantly protest it being passed
Steve
Comment by Stiofán Ó Dubhagáin — June 2, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
I have a friend who got cervical cancer because of HPV. right now she is under going chemotherapy and some anti-cancer drugs. . “
Comment by Robert Collins — April 29, 2010 @ 12:52 am