In England we still have a blasphemy law on the statute books, although it has not been invoked since the 60s. I recall reading somewhere that blasphemy laws also existed in the US. If so, how would that have been possible, given the First Amendment and the constitutional bars on legislating regarding religion?
Also, a wider question. Should the state protect its citizens from having their religion ridiculed and their god or gods denigrated?
Good question (I’m going to keep an eye on this thread).
Certain groups have tried, unsuccessfully to invoke the British blasphemy laws fairly recently; notably in opposition of Rushdie and Scorsese. I don’t know why they failed.
I didn’t think there were any blasphemy laws on the books, but Google proved me wrong. The online edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia indicates that some U.S. states indeed do have blasphemy laws on the books, but that these laws are unlikely to ever be enforced due to the First Amendment and separation of church and state.
To answer your last question, I don’t think a state should have laws regarding blasphemy. One man’s blasphemy might be another man’s faith, and in the case of religious extremism, such a law could be a deadly instrument to silence and oppress dissenting voices.
It has happened though, that someone has been prosecuted for blasphemy in the United States. This web bio of James Ingersoll indicates that there was a blasphemy trial in 1886 in New Jersey. Although Ingersoll lost the case and his client was convicted, he apparently mocked the idea of blasphemy laws so effectively that prosecutions of this law was rare afterwards.
I’d love to see if there was a 20th century prosecution in the United States under a state’s blasphemy law
The UK had a prosecution (and conviction) for blasphemous libel in 1977. The Editor of “Gay News” was convicted for publishing a poem dealing homoerotic feelings about the crucified Christ. This was the first prosecution since 1922.
In 1989 there was an attempt to bring blasphemy proceedings over the publication of Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses”, but it was held that the blasphemy laws only protected the Christian religion, while “Satanic Verses” dealt with Islam.
In a prosecution, it is for the jury to decide whether the material published crosses the line between ‘moderate and reasoned criticism of Christianity on the one hand and immoderate or offensive treatment of Christianity or sacred subjects on the other’.
The repeal of the law has been proposed, but not yet carried through. There’s an argument that the blasphemy law is a dead letter now that the European Convention on Human Rights has been incorporated into UK law, and in practical terms it may be true. Earlier this year there was a public reading of the poem which was the subject of the 1977 prosecution; the police were informed in advance, and attended. None of those involved has been arrested, charged or prosecuted.
I think it’s extremely difficult to justify any blasphemy law. You might be able to construct a justification in a very polarised society where inflaming religious tensions was likely to lead to disorder, riots and death.
I’m not a US lawyer, but the US’s constitutional free speech guarantees must be a serious impediment to any blasphemy law in the US. The US contoversy over flag-burning laws raises very similar issues.
Most blasphemy laws in the U.S. are going to date to the early or mid 19th century before the 14th Amendment began suggesting that state constitutions and legislatures were actually bound by the U.S. Constitution. (The actual imposition of U.S. Supreme Court decisions binding the states to that notion came rather later.)
Not blasphemy, specifically, but:
In Michigan, a couple of years back, an angry, wet canoeist was charged under a law banning “bad” (obscene? profane?) language near women and children. He was convicted on the facts, but his conviction was overturned, this past Spring, by the Michigan Supreme Court.
The Gay News case was a private prosecution brought by Mary Whitehouse. The European Court of Human Rights accepted the right of Britain to have a blasphemy law in upholding the ban on Nigel Wingrove’s film Visions of Ecstacy.
Fuck Mary Whitehouse.
Bit late for that. She died in November 2001.
Here’s the Massachussetts statute on blasphemy; it makes interesting reading. I’m surprised that nobody has challenged it.
The implication behind this question (and the attempts to extend the British blasphemy law to Islam in the Rushdie case) is that there can be a “general purpose” blasphemy law that will protect the religious beliefs of all citizens, but clearly this is not possible. The evangelical Christian citizen proclaims that the gods of the Hindu citizen are false and the Hindu citizen is engaging in vain and empty idolatry. If the evangelical Christian citizen is not prosecuted for blasphemy, then the Hindu citizen must put up with her gods being denigrated. But, if the evangelical Christian citizen is prosecuted, then in effect the evangelical Christian’s god is now being denigrated–by the State itself–since it is a core belief of evangelical Christians that their god is in fact God, and is not equal to everyone else’s gods.
The only way blasphemy laws can work is if the State chooses one religion and proclaims it to be the true religion, and gives it preferential protection over other religions. Which I would strongly oppose, and which is clearly forbidden by the U.S. Constitution (not to mention any of the constitutions of the states).