I’m not hopeful. If the conservatives ever get enough states, I’m guessing they will call a constitutional convention and delete the bill of rights. Excepting the 2nd Amendment, of course.
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Oh the irony.
Is blasphemy like libel, where you get to argue in court that it’s not a crime because it’s true?
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Is the problem that god can’t afford his own lawyer?
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There is a God, but that’s not the issue.
Blasphemy laws are tools of power that seek to constrain people’s speech on the basis of a non-existent right not to be offended. They have absolutely no place in a pluralist society. Nor do their secular equivalents.
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shit fascists say dot txt
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We don’t know what their motivation is. If they’re just trying to make trouble or score some point for “their side”, obviously that’s execrable. But if it’s an attempt to expose the stupidity of the law itself–so that it will be removed–then they’ve done a good thing, ISTM.
Dear Ireland, mine is also a maniac…jumps up on me, licks its butt, spills water on my wood floor…OH, sorry, dyslexic.
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I’m getting unpleasant reminders of that scene from V for Vendetta where Stephen Fry’s character is violently abducted by government thugs because he aired something that offended the Powers that Be.
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How can you call someone an utter maniac if they are just a figment of people’s collective imagination?
Also, are blasphemy laws still in place? How insulting. I think there should be a law against blasphemy laws.
For Stephen Fry, it’s a symbolic law. For someone with less public standing, well, what do you think these laws are really for? They get used by the powerful to suppress dissent.
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In anycase, as long as they have blasphemy laws on the books, then they need to have their god show up in court for such a law to be valid. Blasphemy has no victims. Just zealous asshats who think that since they say god says something, then everyone should respect them and their feelings.
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Long dead and thoroughly rotting.
The degree of political power and legal deference given to Christian churches in the US, even before the current acceleration, would be considered shocking in most other developed countries.
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I’m still not convinced that the person who reported this is actually trying to question the law and not just someone with too much time on their hands, but it looks like the Department of Justice are preparing a referendum on it.
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Morris-dancing Stephen Fry DO NOT WANT.
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Other thread was titled “Stephen Fry faces blasphemy probe after God comments”. I was left wondering where God had commented.
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No they don’t, it’s been several hundred years since that was true.
That’s the point – they haven’t been. It’s a law on the books that’s never been enforced, along the lines of the ‘no public dancing’ law. A lot of people are theorizing that someone issued a public complaint specifically so that Fry could use his high profile to get rid of this ridiculous law.
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Thank you.
I get things wrong myself but my experiences of Ireland and the Irish lead me to think that the root problem is one of tribalism. Why are some societies like Ireland, Serbia and Palestine so tribal while others (like Switzerland, say,) are so resolutely non-tribal? Back 1500 years ago Ireland consisted of 5 (and sometimes 4) kingdoms who spent their time kicking shit out of one another - hints of which are in the Tain bo Cuailnge. And modern day Northern Ireland is still carved out, effectively, of Armagh. Irish history is almost uniformly depressing, though it has brightened up a bit recently. I have a nasty feeling that the UK leaving the EU will result in a return of the Troubles, though.
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How is assigning things to tribalism any different than assigning it to religion, though? And how long as it been since Ireland was a “tribalized” society in reality?
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