Today is International Blasphemy Day, administered by the Center For Inquiry as part of its Campaign for Free Expression. Atheist Ireland is an advocacy group for an ethical and secular Ireland: see details in these Irish Times articles on the Irish blasphemy law and our first AGM.
Atheist Ireland is seeking your help today to launch and shape a new long-term campaign with two important aims: to repeal the new Irish blasphemy law and to attain a secular Irish Constitution. Specifically, we are asking you to do three things: send us a message of support, get actively involved in shaping this project, and lobby to persuade Irish politicians to pursue these policies.
We will soon be holding public meetings around Ireland to launch this campaign. We want it to include religious and nonreligious people working together, within Ireland and with international support. The campaign has one common aim that transcends any other differences we may have: that all Irish citizens, of all beliefs and none, can live together in equality, with the State being neutral on matters of religion.
In recent decades, several independent and all-party committees (most whose members were Christians) have repeatedly called for an end to discrimination against nonreligious citizens in our Constitution. Not only has this not been done, but a new religious crime has now been created. The blasphemy law is the final straw. We need a secular Irish Constitution, and we need it now. Please help to make this happen.
(more…)
Today the Irish President signed into law the Defamation Act that includes the newly-defined crime of blasphemy. This law will become operable when the Minister for Justice signs an order making it so.
Atheist Ireland will now campaign for the repeal of this anachronistic and dangerous blasphemy law, and for a referendum to remove the blasphemy reference from the Irish Constitution, as part of our wider campaign for an ethical and secular Ireland.
We call on the Minister for Justice to delay signing the order that would make the blasphemy sections of the Defamation Act operable, until such time as a referendum can be held to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Constitution.
(more…)
Atheist Ireland has sent a letter to the President of Ireland, outlining our concerns about the constitutionality of the new blasphemy law, for her to consider before she discusses the issue with the Council of State tomorrow. In our letter we argue the following:
- The law is contrary to the guarantees of equality under the law enshrined in Article 40.1 of the Irish Constitution, and of freedom of conscience and religion enshrined in Article 44.2.
- The law is contrary to Article 44.2.3 of the Irish Constitution, which says that the State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.
- The law shifts the burden of proof to the defendant in contravention of Article 38 of the Constitution, and of Schedule 1, Article 6, 2. and 3(a) of the European Convention on Human Rights Act, 2003.
- The law does not meet the standard of prevention of imminent public disorder that made the old English blasphemy law compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights.
- The definitions in the law are too vague to allow citizens to regulate their conduct, and it could make it unlawful for a religious citizen to inform his co-religionists about a statement he believes to be blasphemous.
Here is the full content of our letter:
(more…)
- 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.)
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern says that he is forced to revive the crime of blasphemy because of legal advice from the Attorney General. But independent legal advisors to the Council of Europe have advised that the offence of blasphemy should be abolished throughout Europe, in a report co-written by the Director General of the Irish Office of the Attorney General.
(more…)
If you are charged with blasphemy in Ireland, you will be tried by a Judge who was obliged to swear a religious oath asking the Christian God to direct and sustain him or her, and who will be enforcing a Constitution that includes these clauses:
- The Preamble begins with the words: “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, we, the people of Eire, humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ…”
- Article 40.6.1 guarantees the right of citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions subject to public order and morality. It then restricts this right by saying that says that “The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”
- Article 44.1 says that “The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.” Note that this article does not enshrine the rights of citizens to worship this imagined character. Instead, it enshrines the rights of this imagined character to be worshipped.
What Eamon de Valera told the Dail during the debate on the 1937 Irish Constitution:
“I want everybody to realise what this Constitution states about authority. In the Preamble, and in the Article that refers to that, there is a clear, unequivocal statement that authority comes from God. That is fundamental. It does not matter what view a group of Catholic theologians may take as to how it comes to the immediate rulers. What we have here is clear at any rate – that authority is from God. That is fundamental Catholic doctrine, and it is here. It is true doctrine.”