Tell it to the people of Canada where they were told that the HRCs were not going to be used against free expression. Same thing for speech codes in the US college system.

Such things are “rules on reserve” — rules that are so vague that they cannot be uniformly or fairly enforced and they exist on the books until someone finds it handy cudgel and has a jurist of like mind at their fingertips. This happened with the HRCs in Canada and even happened in Boulder CO when a judge played the court system to steal a neighbor’s property under their nose.

In this case — as as been demonstrated in other countries where this also was never going to happen — If someone says something that is clearly under free expression but angers a group that is likely to go ballistic, such laws/rules can easily be brought to bear to ensure domestic tranquility by shutting up the people least likely to set things on fire, while more sensitive groups (or groups that intimidate the powers that be for various reasons) can say whatever the hell they want.

Make no mistake the wiggle room for free and provocative expression is shrinking and there’s a line of people willing to volunteer to be the “makers of manners.”

That’ll be my job.

A burden, but someone’s gotta do it.

I’m going to become Muslim now before the rush starts. Got an old bedsheet here, bit of a nip and tuck and I’ll be all set

Don’t forget your badger though.

Will the believers in the Abdominal Snowman demand that their “belief” be classed as being sacred,

That’s the Most Holy and High Abdominal Snowman, or Y-TI to you, infidel!

Andrew Coates has it right.

And the irony is, this idiotic religious fuckwittery by the Free State has the (un)fortunate side-effect of making Robert Kilroy-Silk (PBUH*) look like a wise man ahead of his time, a true prophet of our ages.

(*Permantan Be Upon Him).

Re this law. As somone who is (in US) terms Irish (that is me Scots granny was called Kelly), us lot got kicked out of the Catholic Church. Me great-grand father, family legend, was a trade unionist and socialist, and a bit of whisky drinker. When the priest denounced him at the Mass the whole family walked out.

The idea of having that lot being protected by law does not please me.

Talk to any Irish who was brought up under the boot of the Chruch (Christian brothers to start with).

This “Law”, however nefarious, opens the theoretical floodgates for every single nonsense believing lunatic on planet Earth to claim they are the victim of “grossly abusive or insulting” treatment by anyone who disputes their nonsense, for example:

Is everyone who says ’scientologists’ are completely fucking nuts, guilty of the offense of blasphemy?

Is everyone who says the ‘heavens gate’ cult were even more insane than the David Koresh Branch Davidian sect, guilty of blasphemy?

Will the believers in the Abdominal Snowman demand that their “belief” be classed as being sacred, what about the ‘alien abductees’ would a future claim of divine intervention by these spaceship hopping nutcases be deemed legitimate?

Not to mention the years long machinations of the OIC to to introduce a UN sanctioned ban on all words, thoughts and drawings, deemed “blasphemous to the most insidious of the modern day fantasies?

There is no “GOD”, just as there is no Lock Ness Monster, no Bigfoot, no Father fucking Christmas, there is no “GOD”

The only reason people believe there is a “GOD” is because they want to believe there is a “GOD”, they want it to be true, but wanting to believe something is true is not the same as something being true, it really isn’t.

Now under normal circumstances the very real urge to want to believe something is true, something that has no basis in fact, something that is based PURELY on the books written by bronze age people who thought, for instance, that the universe revolved around the planet Earth, something that is to all but the most limited intellect, clearly bronze age superstition, wouldn’t normally be a problem, it could simply put down as an eccentricity, a harmless delusion harbored in the cortex of a less than fully developed intellect.

But we don’t live in normal times, we live in the 21st century, the space age, the age of unbelievable advances in Human knowledge.

Or do we?

Religious fanatics, especially Islamist maniacs are trying their utmost to turn back the tide of our progress as a species and return us to the age of darkness and as far as I can see this Irish blasphemy “law” merely hammers another nail into the coffin lid of those who gave their lives to free us from the tyranny of the fantasy called “religion”.

I for one refuse to bow to anyone, I care too much about my children’s future to “submit” or “convert” to any ideology, especially the irrational figment of some bronze age ego maniacs imagination.

That is simply who I am, I think all religions are simply nonsense, I believe, just as strongly as the most fervent fundamentalist, that religion is simply the expression of a collective heartfelt delusion by Humans who cannot accept their own or their loved ones mortality.

If there is a “God”, then prove it, it’s all I ask.

The religious can’t prove it though, can they, that’s why they enact these Laws, when all else fails, make it illegal to question their veracity.

That’s the way it was for millennia, let’s not go back there.

The only “public body” (I use the word very loosely, in the sense it’s a bunch of people with a web site) has supported this legislation, MPAC.ie, which was set up by an Irish convert, Liam Egan, and doesn’t appear to have any among Muslims here (MPAC.ie seems to consist of him, his family, and one or 2 supporters, and he’s derided on Irish muslim forums).

The only explicable reason for this is internal party politics. The Taoiseach and current leader of Fianna Fail, Cowen, is a dead duck. His deputy, “Sweary” Mary Coughlan, is derided as someone who makes Sarah Palin look smart and competent (and the latter is not known for swearing inappropriately either). So the two current favourites are Michael Martin, from the liberal wing of the party, and Dermot Ahern (no relation to Bertie), the Justice Minister and the man responsible for drafting and bringing in the legislation. Martin came out in 2009 against the attempt to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level. Ahern seems to be trying to draw a line between them.

P.

An Irish solution to an Irish problem.

I have explaimed above that the law is a technicality. It was not requested by any Church but created because the Attorney General said it was required under the terms of the Constitution adopted in 1937. In the seven decades afterwards no-one had bothered about that.

In the old days the Irish used to know how to deal pragmatically with religious matters. In 1967 we got free second level education. It was “free” because the religious orders were running most of our secondary schools and charging students about £21 per year – not huge money even then. When the State picked up that tab, education became free.

HOWEVER Protestants did not have Religious Orders – in fact that was one of the main issues behind the Reformation – and their school fees were much higher. The Government solved the problem by paying a block grant to Protestant schools as opposed to the capitation one to Catholics. That was the merest fig leaf to cover up the fact that the Protestants were getting more. The fig leaf was needed because paying them more was a breach of the Constitution. Nobody objected in 1967 because thats the way things were done then. Today everybody stands on their rights and the Fundamentalists are nearly all secularists. (The block grant to Protestant schools was recently removed – allegedly as a cost saving measure but quite possibly because civil servants and politicians object to any kind of religious school.)