As to the question at hand, I too am opposed to any anti-blasphemy laws. Anyone should have the right to clearly and emphatically express their opinions about any religion or all religions, whatever those opinions might be, without fear of punishment by law.

That said: each person has a right to be treated with the same consideration and respect and [in the larger sense] love that we want to be treated with. This is true even of people who do not themselves adhere to this principle. If you think a certain religion’s [or all religions'] teachings are dangerous nonsense, and you feel like saying so, by all means do that. But please, put it in a way which is not purposely insulting or intended to cause other people pain. I myself think there are forms of religion — including forms of Judaism — which are harmful both to those who believe in them and to the rest of us, so I am sometimes in the same position as anti-religious people find themselves. But the Golden Rule still applies. And *that* is more important than any and all arguments over beliefs. The New Testament — which has much that I like and much that I don’t like — says that anyone who says he loves God but does not love his fellow human beings is a liar. It says to “speak the truth in love” and I think both parts of that are equally important.

One more point — frankly I think that people who consider it necessary to devote a whole lot of their time to angrily and rudely denouncing religion [or any particular thing] may well have a personal emotional issue underlying that, which it would be in their own best interest to deal with. This is independent of whether or not what they’re saying is true.

Thanks for reading this and best wishes to everyone who has posted comments here.

If there is an infinite God, then he needs no laws to protect him. No, these laws are only for the protection of those timid souls who fear any difference of opinion, and especially for those who fear that their own ideas cannot be defended.

I try not to deliberately insult anyone personally, but attacking ideas one thinks are foolish or harmful is to me almost a moral duty. How will we learn and grow without debates over ideas?

I am not Catholic, but I do think that there are some unfair and unkind comments here. There is no reason, for example, to think that most priests are pedophiles. Many are good people trying to do good, though I think that many of their ideas do harm.

My beef is with bad ideas, not the victims of those ideas. Irrational ideas can harm everyone, not just the believer, and this law is an example of this.