Ireland’s new blasphemy law is being purposefully flouted by the atheists of Ireland. The group has put up a website that publishes 25 quotations that are blasphemous to contest the law in the courts. Right now the site is getting crushed with traffic, so I will link instead their Google cache. As a proponent of individual liberties and rights I have to show my solidarity, so please take some time to read up on this ridiculous law.
If you are religious you will most likely find these quotes offensive, and I used to really care a lot about not offending religious people even though I’ve been atheist all my life. (Even as a child going to Sunday school I never really believed, bible stories were just another genre of fiction to me – not quite as good as Tom Swift, nor the factual articles in Encyclopedia Britannica and Americana, however I’ve always taken pains not to offend the religious with my atheism.)
That has changed slowly over the past four years as the Religious Right in the US has hijacked the Republican party. Rather than being another PAC or group within the big tent, they have declared themselves owner of the tent with veto power over who gets in and who doesn’t. All of their bigotry against atheists and homosexuals and other minorities is now on virulent display across the right wing blogosphere, and some things that used to be confined to hate groups like Fred Phelp’s church and Randall Terry’s hate group Operation Rescue, are now on virulent display and just accepted. So I’m not worried about offending them anymore – there’s no God that can shut me up either.
Continue reading “Blasphemy in Ireland”
