The word is that New Labour may be about to abolish the centuries old blasphemy laws. This is probably the only true victimless “crime” on the statute book, as things stand. More importantly, it is a potentially serious threat to the freedom of speech, which is simply not acceptable in today’s Britain. This comes a month after the High Court ruling against a Christian fundamentalist group that tried to use the law to prosecute the BBC for showing Jerry Springer – The Opera.
Asides from the obvious free speech argument, this episode also highlighted the discrepancies in the law as it stands – that it doesn’t cover theatres or tv and radio broadcasts, and only applies to the Christian god.
The last time the blasphemy law was used successfully was in a 1977 private prosecution by the anti-free speech campaigner, Mary Whitehouse – and arguably it was an anomaly then. No doubt, though, we’ll get another piece by some Bishop before long complaining that the repealing of this law undermines British morality in some way, and conveniently forgetting that this law is an example of what happens when a society is run for the good of one particular religion in the first place: it willingly criminalises those who offer different opinions to their accepted orthodoxy.
