Comments on: Free speech

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:18:19 +0000

I’m with Anthony on this – the only Christian groups whose position I’m aware of were in favour of free speech which criticises religion. I seem to remember that a mulsim group and the UN HRC wanted a ban on such criticism though – perhaps that’s what Dave was thinking of? Do you have a source or a link for the specific groups you had in mind, Dave?

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:04:52 +0000

My recollection is that the government didn’t want a free speech protection for either. I can clearly remember the protests by the likes of Rowan Atkinson and other comedians wanting to retain the ‘right to offend’ in the context of the religious hatred legislation. The government were defeated on that too. As stated above, catholic and anglican bishops and the metodists were in favour of limiting free speech on the religious hatred issue but have been notable in their silence on the current legislation. This is what I’m suggesting is hipocritical.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:50:47 +0000

The Government was trying to remove the “free speech” clause for sexual conduct, while leaving the “free speech” clause for religious hatred intact. That strikes me as being somewhat inconsistent, and I’m glad that common sense has prevailed.

I’m not sure which groups you are referring to, but those I’m aware of have argued for free speech to be protected explicitly in both cases. After all, Christians want to be allowed to argue against other religions just as much as “non-religious” people do!

Incitement to violence – or to any crime – is, and always has been, illegal. This “incitement to hatred” legislation is different, because it is not a crime to hate someone.

Back to the source extraction…

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:38:02 +0000

They would appear to want that for those criticising and ridiculing religion, so it would also have to be the case here if the law were to be consistent. Of course they might see things rather differently. I would argue that would be more than a little hipocritical.

Of course incitment to violence on racial, religious, or sexual grounds, as with other forms of incitement, is something to take very seriously and should be investigated and, if necessary, punished.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:29:23 +0000

…and if they did, should they be arrested?

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:49:09 +0000

According to my memory and various sources the anglican and roman catholic bishops supported the measure as well as the methodists. That’s probably a majority of what I understand of as christians in the UK. Not sure where they stand on the issue of criticizing sexual practices, but I could make an educated guess that they’d quite like to criticize…

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:30:05 +0000

Hi Dave, The religious groups I'm aware of were campaigning for the free speech clause for religious beliefs - e.g., The Christian Institute. I, for one, am very glad we live in a society where it's not illegal to criticise and ridicule religious beliefs. Anthony

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:13:37 +0000

As I recall, various religious groups were arguing that there should be no ‘freedom of speech’ defense when the racial and religious hatred bill was passing through parliament. If that measure had passed then it would now be illegal to ‘criticise and ridicule’ religious beliefs, and such movies as The Life of Brian would be banned since it’s content would have been deemed to be a ‘hate cerime’.

You can’t have it both ways…

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:25:50 +0000

Update: the Government has backed down, and (with "considerable disappointment") will allow what they perceive to be an unnecessary clause to remain in the legislation.