- Rip it up and start again?
(report by Sarah McInerney in the Sunday Times: groups representing gay rights, children’s rights, civil rights, women’s rights, one-parent families, humanists and atheists are all demanding that referenda be held to amend the 72-year-old constitution, the better to reflect the needs of modern Irish society.)
June 28, 2009
In the News – Sunday June 28
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I made the following comment on the “help required” thread before I read this section.
I think perhaps that this would be a more appropriate place for the comment so I am copying it here.
(If you wish Michael, please feel free to delete one or the other -Jack)
Another point to consider if the blasphemy becomes a crime, how is a defendant to get a fair trial?
Or constitution requires a judge to swear an oath to GOD in order to be appointed.
In other words, all judges either believe in the existence of a GOD (and in Irish Law. that is the Christian “God”) or are very casual with the concept of an oath or swearing.
That raises the fact that an atheist or non-believer being prosecuted for the “crime” of blasphemy will be judged and/or sentenced by someone who has publicly acknowledged a belief in the fictional being that was insulted (blasphemed) -assuming the judge has a respect for oaths. Would such a judge give more weight to the evidence of someone who swears “on the bible” than to one who affirms? I merely ask the question, but have in the past found it difficult to even to affirm my evidence having been handed a bible as I enter the witness box
It also means that you cannot really appeal any conviction in a meaningful way, as the person hearing the appeal has also affirmed the existence of this character, they defer to.
Comment by Jack Butler — June 30, 2009 @ 2:52 pm